



1 • t 






Class Ea*6 
Book . 13 74 



84^<L 



AN 



ORATION, 

DELIVERED 

BEFORE THE AUTHORITIES 

OK TIIE 

CITY OF BOSTON, 

JULY 4, 1842. 



BY HORACE MANN, 

SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF EDUCATION. 



FIFTH EDITION. 



Fellow-Citizens, — It is meet that we should assemble to mingle our congrat- 
ulations in public, on the recurrence of this Anniversary. The celebration of fes- 
tival days in honor of illustrious progenitors is a universal fact in human history. 
It therefore proves the existence of a universal sentiment in human nature, which 
finds its appropriate utterance in such commemorations. This is a sentiment of 
gratitude and reverence towards the great and good ; and it is honorable both to 
author and object. Under the impulse of these feelings, the heroes of ancient 
times were deified by their descendants. To consecrate their memory, sculpture 
reared statues and shrines. Architecture built monuments and temples. Poetry 
hymned their praises. Eloquence and its responsive acclamations made the arches 
of heaven resound with their fame ; and even the sober muse of history, dazzled 
by the brilliancy of their exploits, exaggerated fact into fiction, until the true was 
lost in the fabulous. 

In our day, this sentiment is modified but not extinguished. All modern nations 
celebrate the anniversary of those days, when their annals were illuminated, or 
their perilled fortunes rescued, by some grand historic achievement. 

The universality and unbroken continuity of these observances seem prophetic 
of their continuance. 

But it is especially worthy of remark, that these public and joyous tributes are 
paid only to propitious events, or magnanimous deeds, — to what is grand in con- 
ception, or glorious in achievement. No days are set apart to commemorate na- 
tional disaster or ignominy for its own sake. The good only is celebrated. The 
base, the cowardly, whether in motive or in action, is consigned, through silence, 
to oblivion. 

What a lesson is here, were we so teachable as to learn it! How soon will our 
position be changed from that of posterity to ancestors ; and the strict rules by 
which we honor or despise predecessors, be applied to us by impartial descendants. 
Whatever of true, generous, or morally heroic, is wrought out by us, shall be 
gratefully embalmed in the memories of men ; and around millions of firesides, 
many millions of hearts shall leap with joy at its oft-recurring narration. But 
what is sordid, perfidious, — a perversion of public good to private ends, — shall be 
scoffed and hissed at; and its happiest fate shall be an early forgetfulness. 

It is, indeed, an impressive thought, — one full of the deepest significancy, — that 

throughout this vast country, over all its degrees of latitude and longitude, and on 

the seas which bind the globe in their azure and glorious cincture, — soon as the 

beams of this morning's sun gilded spire or mast-head, the shout of exultation and 

1 



the peal of artillery arose, and sweeping onward and westward like the tidal wave, 
they are now circuiting the globe, in honor of those heroes and martyrs who, only 
sixtysix years ago, pledged " fortune, life, and sacred honor" to establish the Inde- 
pendence of these United States.' How many times has this story been rehearsed, 
and yet to the patriot's ear, it never grows old. How curiously has the history of 
that great revolutionary epoch been investigated; and even now, if some minute of 
a council, — whether of war or of state, — held at midnight ; some memorandum of 
an order given at a critical juncture ; or some hitherto elusive letter, can be found 
among the records of our government, or pursued across the ocean and drawn 
from its lurking-place in British or French archives, it is published, read and reit- 
erated by all, and the original is prized, almost like the relic of a saint among the 
faithful. And all those doings and achievements were less than seventy years ago, 
— less than the period allotted by the Psalmist to the life of man. Nay, some of 
the actors in those scenes are amongst us still ; and we have proof of the reality 
not from their lips merely, but honorable scars are their credentials — the hiero- 
glyphs wherein the sacred history is chronicled. Not only have we the mauso- 
leums of battlefields, but every church-yard in New England is thickly strown 
with the graves of the heroic dead, whose simple inscriptions, — nobler than armo- 
ial bearings, — proclaim that they sought toil as a pleasure and rejoiced in self-sacri- 
fice, that they might do good to us, whom they saw only with the eye of faith. 

And yet, let me again say, how obvious it is that we stand la the same relation 
to posterity that our ancestors do to us. And, as we boldly summon our fore- 
fathers to our tribunal for adjudication upon their conduct, so will our conduct be 
brought into judgment by our successors. Each generation has duties of its own 
to perform ; and our duties, though widely different from theirs, are not less 
important in their character, or less binding in their obligations. It was their duty 
to found or establish our institutions, and nobly did they perform it. It is our duty 
to perfect and perpetuate these institutions ; and the most solemn question which 
can be propounded to this age, is, are we performing it nobly? Shall posterity 
look back upon our present rulers, as we look back upon Arnold, or as we look 
back upon Washington ? Shall posterity look back upon us, as we look back upon 
the recreants who sought to make Washington Dictator, and would have turned 
those arms against their country, which had been put into their hands to save her? 
or shall posterity look back upon us with the heart-throbbings, the tears and pas- 
sionate admiration, with which we regard the Saviour-like martyrs who, for our 
welfare, in lonely dungeons and prison-ships, breathing a noisome atmosphere, — 
their powerful and robust frames protracting their tortures beyond the common 
endurance of nature, until they slowly but literally perished by starvation, — and 
when the minions of power came round, day after day, and offered them life and 
freedom and a glad return to the upper air, if they would desert their country's 
cause — refused, and died ? 

I have said that it is our especial and appropriate duty to perfect and perpetuate 
the institutions we have received. I am aware that this has been said for the last 
fifty years, thousands of times every year. I do not reiterate the sentiment, 
therefore, for its originality ; nor even for its importance ; but for the sake of 
inquiring, in what manner this work is to be done 1 It has long seemed to me 
that it would be more honorable to our ancestors, to praise them, in words, less; 
but in deeds, to imitate them more. If from their realms of blessedness, they could 
address us, would they not say ? "Prove the sincerity of your words, by imitating 
the examples you profess to admire. The inheritance we left you is worthless, 
unless you have inherited the spirit also by which it was acquired. The boon we 
would bequeath to the latest posterity, can never reach and bless them, save through 
your hands. In these spiritual abodes, whence all disturbing passions are exclu- 
ded, where all illusions are purged from our eyes, we can neither be beguiled nor 
flattered by lip-service. Deeds are the only language we understand ; and one 
act of self-sacrifice for the welfare of mankind is more acceptable to us than if you 
should make every mountain and hill-top a temple to hallow our names, and 
gather thither the whole generation as worshippers." 

Such is the spirit in which I believe our sainted fathers would admonish us. 



But, alas for the holiday patriot ! it is so much easier to praise and get up jubilees 
than it is to work ; — it is so much pleasanter to encore a song, than to enlist for a 
campaign with its privations and diseases and death ; — this in-door declamation and 
psalm-singing so much better befit the nice and dainty sentimentalist, than to go 
forth into the conflict, and year after year, to wrestle with difficulties, as with an 
angel of God, until Heaven yields to the importunacy of our struggles what it de- 
nied to the formality of our prayers! — all this poetic contemplation of duty is so 
much easier and cheaper than its stern performance, that we are in perpetual 
danger of degenerating from effort and self-sacrifice into ceremony and cant. 

Were a stranger to come amongst us, and to hear our National Songs, our 
Fourth of July Orations, and Caucus Speeches, he would say, " Verily, there 
never were such patriots as these since the days of Thermopylae." But were he 
to remain with us, and become familiar with the spirit of ambition and self-seek- 
ing that afflicts us, if be thought any more of Thermopylae, it would be, not of the 
Spartans, but of Xerxes and his plundering invaders. 

Fellow-Citizens, we have sterner duties to perform than to assemble here an- 
nually, to listen to glorifications of our great country and our great people, of our 
super-Ciceronian and super-Demosthenean orators, and to praise poetry and art 
and genius that are to be, at sometime ; and then, after refreshing ourselves with 
feast and jovial song, to close the day with some gairish show, and forthwith to vote 
ourselves upon the pension list, for the residue of the year, in consideration of 
such meritorious services. The quiet seat of an honorary member in our com- 
munity, is not so easily won. Trusts, responsibilities, interests, vaster in amount, 
more sacred in character, than ever before in the providence of God were commit- 
ted to any people, have been committed to us. The great experiment of Repub- 
licanism, — of the capacity of man for self-government, — is to be tried anew, which 
wherever it has been tried, — in Greece, in Rome, in Italy, — has failed, through an 
incapacity in the people to enjoy liberty without abusing it. Another trial is to be 
made, whether mankind will enjoy more and suffer less, under the ambition and ra- 
pacity of an irresponsible parliament, or of irresponsible parties ; — under an hered- 
itary sovereign who must, at least, prove his right to destroy, by showing his birth, 
or under mobs, which are like wild beasts, that prove their right to devour by 
showing their teeth. A vacant continent is here to be filled up with innumerable 
millions of human beings, who may be happy through our wisdom, but must be 
miserable through our folly. Religion, — the ark of God, — which, of old times, was 
closed that it might not be profaned, — is here thrown open to all, whether Christian, 
Jew, or Pagan ; and yet is to be guarded from desecration and sacrilege, lest we 
perish with a deeper perdition than ever befel any other people. 

These are some of the interests committed to our keeping ; — these are some of 
the duties we have to discharge. These duties, too, are to be discharged by a 
people, who are liable to alienation from each other by all those natural jealousies 
which spring from sectional interests, from discordant local institutions, from dif- 
ferences in climate, language, and ancestry. We are exposed to the jealousies 
which bad men — or which good men, whose knowledge is disproportioned to their 
zeal, may engender amongst us. And, on many questions of equal delicacy and 
magnitude, are we not already armed and marshalled against each other, rather 
than allied and sworn for common protection ? 

In this exigency, I affirm that we need far more of wisdom and rectitude than 
we possess. Preparations for our present condition have been so long neglected 
that we now have a double duty to perform. We have not only to propitiate to 
our aid a host of good spirits, but we have to exorcise a host of evil ones. Every 
aspect of our affairs, public and private, demonstrates that we need, for their suc- 
cessful management, a vast accession to the common stock of intelligence and 
virtue. But intelligence and virtue are the product of cultivation and training. 
They do not spring up spontaneously. As yet, all Utopias belong to fiction and 
not to history ; and these fictions have so little verisimilitude, that ages have passed 
since the last one was written. We need, therefore, unexampled alacrity and 
energy in the application of all those influences and means, which promise the 
surest and readiest returns of wisdom and probity, both public and private. 



This is my subject on the present occasion ; — "a demonstration that our existing 
means for the promotion of intelligence and virtue are wholly inadequate to the 
support of a Republican government. If the facts I have to offer should abate 
something from our national vain-glory and presumption, I hope they may add as 
much to national prudence and forethought. 

The sovereignty of a great nation is surely one of the most precious of earthly 
trusts. The happiness or misery which a government dispenses, has dimension in 
two directions, — depth, as well as superficial extent. It not only reaches widely 
around, amongst contemporaries; but far downwards amongst posterity. Hence, 
as the well-being of many generations, — each of these generations consisting of 
many millions, — depends upon the administration of a government, — there is some- 
thing sublime and awful in the mere contemplation of the interests committed to 
rulers ; and we see the reasonableness of the requisition that they should rule in 
righteousness. 

Without going any deeper into the philosophy of the subject than the mere con- 
sideration of these two facts, — the progressive increase of the human family, and 
the stationary size of the planet on which they reside, — that is, the impossibility of 
our pulling down and building greater, for the race, as we would to meet the wants 
of an enlarging household ; I think we are authorized to infer that it was the de- 
sign of God at the creation that men should live together in large companies or 
communities. As the race multiplies, and the un-enlargeable tenement becomes 
crowded, mankind must obviously live together, either as social beings, or as can- 
nibals, — for mutual improvement, or for mutual sustenance. And though the 
theory of the latter relation would derive much support from history, yet it seems 
to me clear that the former is the will of Heaven. 

If then, men live together as a people or nation in a social capacity, there must 
obviously be some exposition or expression of the national will, in a system of 
laws, more or less definite, for common guidance. 

But it would always be impossible that the first Legislature should foresee and 
provide for all future contingencies ; and hence the necessity of a perpetual suc- 
cession^ Legislatures to supply defects, and to meet emergencies as they arise. 
But again ; laws are general, while all the cases arising under them are particular ; 
— and therefore, government must exercise another function, — that of expounding 
and applying the law. This function is Judicial, and wholly different from the 
Legislative. The latter declares, generally, what the rule shall be ; the former, 
specifically, to what cases or circumstances the rule shall be applied. And once 
more ; — the law, as it comes from the Legislature, and the decision, as it comes 
from the Court, have no inherent, self-executing power. The parchment on which 
they are written, would moulder and crumble, and leave no vestige behind, if the 
government had not also been vested with an Executive power, — the power of ex- 
ecution, — the prerogative of making things to be, as the Legislature and the Court 
have said they ought to be. It is obvious, then, that the simplest government has 
various attributes ; and if Heaven has ordained the existence of human government, 
it must also have ordained the existence and exercise of this variety of attributes. 

And further, I deem it no unauthorized assumption, to claim as a postulate, — a 
point to be conceded in the outset, — at least by all who are not atheists, — that, as 
God is a being of infinite wisdom and goodness, no part of his universe can be 
successfully administered except it be upon the principles of knowledge and virtue. 
He could neither have created nor ordained aught in violation of his own nature. 
He could not have created any race of intellectual and moral beings, standing in 
such relations to each other, that universal selfishness and false knowledge should 
result in the public good. And this we may affirm not only of all things which 
now exist, but of all things which may spring from present existences. For the 
goodness and wisdom of the Creator are not limited to those things which we see 
and understand, but they exist every where; — just as the beautiful rainbow of the 
summer shower is not confined to the bright arch which gladdens our eyes, but 
glows wherever sunbeam and rain-drop meet, and only needs an eye rightly placed, 
in order to be seen. 



If then God made man a social being-, and therefore made it necessary that he 
should live iti a community with his fellows, and that this community should have 
laws binding them together, as one moral entity ; He made it also necessary that 
these laws should be founded in wisdom and equity, and observed with fidelity ; 
and every departure from these great principles, either in the formation or the ob- 
servance of the laws, must be followed, inevitably, by a corresponding degree of 
loss and harm. This is as obvious, as that a machine must be operated according 
to the principles of its construction. The operator must have so much of the in- 
ventor's mind, as to work the machine on the inventor's plan. The application of 
a divergent force will at least impair its working, — of a counter-force, will destroy 
it. It is solely through a departure from these principles of wisdom and goodness, 
that mankind have suffered miseries which history cannot record nor imagination 
conceive. The civil tyrant has cast nations, as one man, into his fiery alembic, 
that from the happiness of them all, he might distil one drop to stimulate his foul- 
est appetites ; and the ecclesiastical tyrant, not content with robbing mankind of 
the precious blessings and joys of religion on earth, has carried his spoliations 
into eternity. In this western world, a portion of the race have reclaimed their 
freedom; but this is nut a freedom to disobey the laws of our nature, or to exempt 
ourselves from their penalties when broken. It is simply a freedom to use our 
own reason in attempting to discover what those laws are, and our own free-will in 
obeying them ; and thus to perform the conditions, under which alone, a rational 
and free being can fulfil his destiny. 

It is impiety towards the memory of our fathers to suppose that they contended 
merely for the transfer of the source of misgovernment from one side of the At- 
lantic to the other. If we were to be governed forever by ignorance and profli- 
gacy, it mattered little whether that ignorance and profligacy should reside in King 
George, or in King Numbers, — only as the latter king, being much stronger than 
the former, and subject to the ferocity without the imbecility of madness, is capa- 
ble of committing far wider havoc upon human welfare than the former. A voter 
may go to the polls with as light a feeling of responsibility to God and man, or 
with passions as vindictive, as ever actuated the British ministry when they passed 
the Stamp-act, or denounced Adams and Hancock as traitors, and gloated, in im- 
agination, over their quartered bodies. No ! Our fathers gave their pledge of 
" fortune, life and sacred honor," and redeemed it to the letter, that here, on this 
broad theatre of a continent which spread around them, and with time before 
them, their descendants might work out that glorious destiny for mankind, — that 
regeneration, that deliverance from the fetters of iron which had bound the body, 
and from the fetters of error that had bound the soul, — which the prophets and apos- 
tles of liberty, in all ages, had desired to see, but had not seen. 

I have said that all governments, even the despotic or autocratic, must exercise 
three distinct functions, the Legislative, Judicial and Executive ; and that, to ad- 
minister any government, fitly and according to its plan, it requires a certain 
amount of capacity, and responsibleness to right. And no government whatever, 
— Russia, Turkey, Algiers, — can be so simple as not to include these three attri- 
butes, in the last analysis. 

But it is most important to observe further, that whatever adds to the complexity 
of any system of government, increases the difficulties and hazards of administer- 
ing it, and multiplies and heightens the temptations to abuse. Hence the obvious 
necessity, with any augmentation of difficulties and dangers, of additional wis- 
dom and rectitude, as guaranties against failure. 

To apply this remark : however simple our government may be in theory, it has 
proved in practice, the most complex government on earth. It is now an historical 
fact, that more questions for legislative interposition, and for judicial exposition 
and construction, have arisen under it, during the period of its existence, ten to 
one, than have arisen, during the same length of time, under any other form of 
government in Christendom. We are a Union made up of twentysix States, 
a nation composed of twentysix nations; and even beyond the bounds of these, the 
Federal head is responsible for the fate of several vast territories, and of numerous 
Indian tribes. Amongst the component States, there is the greatest variety of cus- 



(oms, institutions and religions. We have the deeper, inbred differences of differ- 
ent ancestry and language ; for our people are of the lineage of all nations. Our 
pursuits for gaining subsistence are various ; and such is the diversity of soil and cli- 
mate, that they must always continue to be so. One portion is agricultural, another 
commercial, another manufacturing. In one section, the natural productions of 
the earth, in forests above the surface or in minerals beneath it, are inexhaustibly 
rich; while of the natural productions of another region, it has been graphically 
said, that they consist of " granite and ice." This region is the New England El 
Dorado, — whose " granite and ice," however, are turned into gold, by industry and 
enterprise. Across the very centre of our territory, a line is drawn, on one side 
of which all labor is voluntary; while, on the opposite side, the system of iuvolun- 
tary labor, or servitude prevails. This is a fearful element of repugnance, — pene- 
trating not only through all social, commercial and political relations, but into 
natural ethics and religion. 

In addition to the multitude of questions for decision, is the mode of deciding 
them. This, indeed, is the grand distinctive feature of our government. The 
questions which arise for decision, are submitted, not to one man, nor to a trium- 
virate, nor to a Council of Five Hundred, but to millions. The number of votes 
given at the last presidential election, was nearly two millions and a half. When 
the appointed day for making the decision arrives, the question must be decided, 
whether the previous preparation which has been made for it, be much, or little, 
or none at all. And, what is extraordinary, each voter helps to decide the ques- 
tion as much by not voting as by voting. If the question is so vast or complicated 
that any one has not time to make up his mind in relation to it ; or if any one is 
too conscientious to act from conjecture, in cases of magnitude, and therefore 
stays from the polls, another, who has no scruples about acting ignorantly or from 
caprice or malevolence, votes ; and, in the absence of the former, decides the 
question against the right. 

The founders of our government, indeed, intended to increase responsibility, 
by limiting the number of its depositaries in the last resort. Hence, in framing 
the Constitution, they gave a two years' tenure of office to the Representatives, 
one of six years to Senators, and of four years to the President ; and in their con- 
temporaneous expositions of that instrument, they declared that the incumbents of 
these offices, during their official term, should act according to their own best 
knowledge and ability, irrespective of the vacillations of party, or the gusts of 
popular clamor. Indeed, so runs the oath of office, — no provision being made, — no 
saving clause being inserted, — allowing a man to vote any way and all ways, 
according to any change among his constituents, or the bearing of his vote upon 
his next election. 

But, through the practice of extorting pledges from a candidate before the elec- 
tion ; through ihe doctrine, or right of instruction as it is called, while one continues 
in office; and emphatically, by the besom of destruction with which a man, who 
dares to act in accordance with the dictates of his own judgment and conscience, 
against the will or whim of his constituents, is swept into political annihilation, the 
theoretical independence of the Representative — Senator — President — is, to a 
great extent, abrogated. Instead of holding their offices for two, six, and four 
years, respectively, they are minute-men ; and many of them examine each mail 
to see what their oaths mean, until the arrival of the next. 

Even this representation is faint and inadequate. The most conscientious men, 
in one State or place, are liable to be catechised out of office, or superseded for 
performing their duty in it, by one party ; while, in another State or place, others 
are subjected to the same fate, for belonging conscientiously, to the opposite party. 
It actually happened, a few years since, that that great statesman and jurist, 
Edward Livingston, lost his election to Congress, in New Orleans, because he had 
honestly espoused one side of an important question ; and, at the same election, 
John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, lost his, because he had honestly espoused the other 
side ; — and so both were excluded from the councils of the nation. Under simi- 
lar circumstances, it often happens that the places of such men are filled by some 



mere negation of a man, or by some political harlequin, who is ready to enter on 
the stage, in any dress that pit or gallery may call for. Now I would ask any 
sober and reflecting man, whether he would not prefer to have his own and his 
country's interests represented on the floor of Congress by individuals such as 
those above named, though widely differing from him on a particular point, rather 
than to have them represented by a base party chameleon, who always reflects the 
political complexion of the district he resides in ; — or, outdoing the chameleon 
himself, changes to the complexion of the district he means to go to? 

But it is not the legislative branch only of our government, into which the power 
of the people directly enters. As jurors, they decide almost all questions of fact 
in the judicial department. As witnesses, they are the medium for furnishing the 
facts themselves to which the court applies its law; and here the witness may be 
said to govern the court ; for, accordingly as he testifies to one thing or its opposite, 
one legal principle or its opposite arises in the judge's mind, and is applied to the 
case. And again, in the absence of a standing army, the people are the only reli- 
ance of the executive power for enforcing either an act of the Legislature or a de- 
cree of the Court, which meets resistance. 

I might advert to another prominent circumstance, showing the difficulties and 
dangers that beset our course. Our government, being representative as it regards 
the people, and federative as it regards the States, is new in the history of the 
race. It has no precedent on the file of nations. We have no experience of 
others, derived from similar experiments, to guide us. Hence our only resort is, 
to see as far as we can, to grope where we cannot see, and to plunge where we 
cannot grope. But I leave this fact and its natural consequences to be traced out 
by each one for himself. 

If then every government, — even the simplest, — requires talent and probity for its 
successful administration ; and if it demands these qualities in a higher and higher 
degree, in proportion to its complexity, and its newness ; then does our government 
require this talent and probity, to an extent indefinitely beyond that of any other 
which ever existed. And if, in all governments, wisdom and goodness in the 
ruler, are indispensable to the dignity and happiness of the subject; then, in a 
government like our own, where all are rulers, all must be wise and good, or we 
must suffer the alternative of debasement and misery. It is not enough that a 
bare majority should be intelligent and upright, while a large minority is ignorant 
and corrupt. Even in such a state, we should be a house divided against itself, 
which, we are taught, cannot stand. Hence knowledge and virtue must penetrate 
society, through and through. We need general intelligence and integrity as we 
need our daily bread. A famine in the latter, would not be more fatal to natural 
health and life, than a dearth in the former to political health and life. 

Two dangers then, equally fatal, impend over us ; — the danger of ignorance 
which does not know its duty, and the danger of vice which, knowing, contemns 
it. To^ensure prosperity, the mass of the people must be both well informed, and 
upright; but it is obvious that one portion of them may be honest but ignorant, 
while the residue are educated but fraudful. 

When, therefore, we say that our government must be administered by adequate 
knowledge, and according to the unchangeable principles of rectitude, we mean 
that it must be administered by men who have acquired this knowledge, and whose 
conduct is guided by these principles. The knowledge and virtue we need are 
not abstractions, idealities, bodiless conceptions ; — they must be incarnated in 
human form, imbodied in the living head and heart ; they must glow with such 
fervid vitality as to burst forth spontaneously into action. Instead of our talking 
so much of these qualities, they must be such a matter of course as not to be 
talked of. 

Such must have been the theory of those who achieved our Independence, and 
framed the organic law of our government. They did not brave the terrors of that 
doubtful struggle, to escape from a supposed one-headed monster on the other side 
of the Atlantic, into the jaws of a myriad-headed monster on this side. No! we 
should rob the patriots of the Revolution of their purest glory, did we not believe 



8 

that the means of self-elevation and self-purification, for the whole people, was an 
infinitely higher object with them, than immunity from pecuniary burdens. Our 
fathers did not go to the British king, like a town pauper, demanding exemption 
from taxes; but they went, like high-priests of God, to reclaim the stolen ark of 
Liberty, — and to bring Dagon upon his face, again and again, till it should be 
restored. 

With the heroes and sages and martyrs of those days, I believe in the capability 
of man for self-government, — my whole soul (hereto most joyously consenting. 
Nay, if there be any heresy among men, or blasphemy against God, at which the 
philosopher might be allowed to forget his equanimity, and the Christian his charitv, 
— it is the heresy and the blasphemy of believing and avowing, that the infinitely 
good and all-wise Author of the universe persists in creating and sustaining a race 
of beings, who, by a law of their nature, are forever doomed to suffer all the 
atrocities and agonies of misgovernment, either from the hands of others, or from 
their own. The doctrine of the inherent and necessary disability of mankind for 
self-government should be regarded not simply with denial, but with abhorrence; — 
not with disproof only, but with execration. To sweep so foul a creed from the pre- 
cincts of truth, and utterly to consume it, rhetoric should become a whirlwind, and 
logic fire. Indeed, I have never known a man who desired the establishment of 
monarchical and aristocratical institutions amongst us, who had not a mental reser- 
vation, that, in such case, he and his family should belong to the privileged orders. 

Still, if asked the broad question, whether man is capable of self-government, 
I must answer it conditionally. If by man, in the inquiry, is meant the Fejee 
Islanders ; or the convicts at Botany Bay ; or the people of Mexico and of some of 
the South American Republics, (so called ;) or those as a class, in our own 
country, who can neither read nor write ; or those who can read and write, and 
who possess talents and an education by force of which they get treasury, or post 
office, or bank appointments, and then abscond with all the money they can steal ; 
I answer unhesitatingly that man, or rather such mm, are not fit for self-govern- 
ment. Fatuity and guilt are no more certain to ruin an individual, or a family 
over which they preside, than they are to destroy a government, into whose rule 
they enter. Politics have been beautifully defined to be the art of making a people 
happy. Such men have no such art; but, with power in their hands, they would 
draw down personal, and dispense universal, misery. 

But if, on the other hand, the inquiry be, whether mankind are not endowed with 
those germs of intelligence and those susceptibilities of goodness, by which, under 
a perfectly practicable system of cultivation and training they are able to avoid the 
evils of despotism and anarchy ; and also, of those frequent changes in national 
policy which are but one remove from anarchy; and to hold steadfastly on their 
way in an endless career of improvement, — then, in the full rapture of that joy and 
triumph which springs from a belief in the goodness of God and the progressive 
happiness of man, I answer, they are able. 

But men are not born in the full possession of such an ability. They do not 
necessarily develope any such ability, as they grow up from infancy to manhood. 
Competency to fill so high a sphere can be acquired only by the cultivation of 
natural endowments, and the subjugation of inordinate propensities. We laugh 
to scorn the idea of a man's being born a ruler or lawgiver, whether King or Peer ; 
but men are born capable of making laws and being rulers, just as much in the 
Old World as in the New. With us, every voter is a ruler and a law-maker, and 
therefore it is no less absurd to say, here, that a man is fit to be a voter by right of 
nativity or naturalization, than it is, in the language of the British constitution, to 
say, that a man shall be Sovereign, or Lord, by hereditary descent. Qualification, 
in both cases, is something superadded to birth or citizenship ; and hence, unless 
we take adequate means to supply this qualification to our voters, the Bishop of 
London or the Duke of Wellington may sneer at us for believing in the hereditary 
right to vote, with as good a grace as we can at them, for believing in the heredi- 
tary right to rule. 

And here a fundamental question arises, — the most important question ever put 



9 

in relation to this people, — whether, when our government was changed from the 
hereditary right to rule, to the hereditary right to vote, any corresponding measures 
were taken to prevent irresponsible voters from abusing their power, as irresponsi- 
ble rulers had abused theirs. Government is a stewardship, always held by a 
comparatively small portion of those whose happiness is dependent upon its acts. 
Even with us, in States where the right of suffrage is most extensive, far less than 
a quarter part of the existing population, sway the fortunes of all the rest, — to say 
nothing of their power over the welfare of posterity. This precious deposit in the 
hands of the foreign steward had been abused ; we reclaimed it from his possession, 
and divided it amongst thousands ; but what guaranty did we obtain from the new 
depositaries, that our treasure should not be squandered or embezzled, as wantonly 
or wrongfully as before? It is more difficult to watch the million than the indi- 
vidual. It is a case, too, where the law of bond and suretyship does not apply ; 
because, when the contract is broken, we have none to apply to for redress save 
the contractor and surety, who themselves have violated their obligation. There is 
but one practicable or possible insurance or gage, and that is, the capacity and 
conscientiousness of the fiduciary. 

When the Declaration of Independence was carried into effect, and the Consti- 
tution of the United States was adopted, the civil and political relations of the 
generation then living and of all succeeding ones, were changed. Men were no 
longer the same men, but were clothed with new rights and responsibilities. Up 
to that period, so far as government was concerned, they might have been ignorant ; 
indeed, it has generally been held that where a man's only duty is obedience, it is 
better that he should be ignorant ; for why should a beast of burden be endowed 
with the sensibilities of a man ! Up to that period, so far as government was 
concerned, a man might have been unprincipled and flagitious. He had no access 
to the statute-book to alter or repeal its provisions, so as to screen his own violations 
of the moral law from punishment, or to legalize the impoverishment and ruin of 
his fellow-beings. But with the new institutions, there came new relations, and an 
immense accession of powers. New trusts of inappreciable value and magnitude 
were devolved upon the old agents and upon their successors, irrevocably. 

Now the rule of common sense applicable to analogous cases, applies emphati- 
cally here ; — confide your fortunes only to the hands of a faithful and competent 
agent, or if, through legal limitation or restriction, they must pass into the hands 
of one at present unqualified to administer them ; spend half, spend nine-tenths of 
the fortune itself, if need be, to qualify the new agent for his duty. 

If, at the epoch to which I have referred, there was any class of men who believed 
that republican institutions contain an inherent and indestructible principle of self- 
preservation, or self-purification, — who believed that a Republic from the necessity 
of its nature is infallible and incorruptible, and, like a beautiful goddess, endowed with 
immortal youth and purity ; or, if there is any class of men at the present day holding 
this faith, let me say it is as fatal an error as was ever harbored by the human mind ; 
because it belongs to that class of errors which blind while they menace, — whose 
deadly shaft is unseen until it quivers in the heart. A republican government is 
the visible manifestation of the people's invisible soul. Through the ballot-box, 
the latent will bursts out into authoritative action. In a republican government 
the ballot-box is the urn of fate ; yet no god shakes the bowl or presides over the 
lot. If the ballot-box is open to wisdom and patriotism aud humanity ; it is equally 
open to ignorance and treachery, to pride and envy, to contempt for the poor or 
hostility towards the rich. It is the loosest filter ever devised to strain out impu- 
rities. It gives equal ingress to whatever comes. No masses of selfishness or 
fraud, no foul aggregations of cupidity or profligacy, are so ponderous or bulky 
as to meet obstruction in its capacious gorge. The criteria of a right to vote 
respect citizenship, age, residence, tax, and, in a few cases, property ; but no 
inquiry can be put whether the applicant is a Cato or a Catiline. To secure fidelity 
in the discharge of their duties, an oath is imposed on the most unimportant officers, 
— constables, clerks, surveyors of roads, of lumber, leather, fish, — while the just 
exercise of this highest function of the citizen, by which law makers, lavvexpound- 

2 



10 

ers, and executive officers are alike created, is secured by no civil sanction. In 
all business transactions, especially where any doubt or distrust attaches to char- 
acter, we reduce our stipulations to writing ; but in conferring the right to vote, 
we take no promise beforehand that it shall be honestly exercised, nor do we reserve 
to ourselves any right of subsequent redress, should the privilege be abused. 

In some States, the law provides that the name of every voter shall be endorsed 
upon the ballot he gives. Suppose, in some of our angry political contests, the 
motives of every voter were written upon his ballot, so that they should all be as 
legible to man, on the paper, as they are visible to God, in the heart, — what a his- 
tory would they reveal ! We are accustomed to quote the abominable edicts of 
popes and kings, and we dwell upon every line, to kindle abhorrence at human 
depravity ; yet, as an exponent of motives, what is the verbiage of papal bulls or 
imperial mandates, compared with the sententious decrees which every man's 
ballot contains, and which go forth omnipotent to execute his will. Yet this irre- 
sponsible utterance through the ballot-box, is the inceptive process of legislation ; 
nay, in all the most important cases, it is legislation, — the will of the people being 
made known here, and only passing on to legislative halls to go through certain 
formalities and be promulgated as law. The human imagination can picture no 
semblance of the destructive potency of the ballot-box in the hands of an ignorant 
and a corrupt people. The Roman cohorts were terrible; the Turkish Janizaries 
were incarnate fiends ; but each was powerless as a child, for harm, compared with 
universal suffrage, without mental illumination and moral principle. The power of 
casting a vote is far more formidable than that of casting spear or javelin. 

One of the foulest in the long catalogue of atrocities which necessitated the 
French Revolution, was the emission of lettres de cachet, — those secret, royal orders, 
by which good men, without trial and without accusation, were snatched, at mid- 
night, from home and from all they held dear, their property confiscated, and them- 
selves imprisoned or assassinated. Yet every vote which a bad man gives, is a 
secret, royal lettre de cachet, against the happiness and hopes of all good men, — 
and given equally without trial, arraignment, or accusation. The right of secret 
ballot is a general license to every bad man in the community, to do, on certain 
days, the vilest deeds he can conceive, with perfect impunity. With such, election 
days are the Saturnalia of all vicious desires. But evil motives will issue in evil 
deeds ; and the deeds will be disarmed of none of their malignity because they 
are done in secret. 

On one of those oft-recurring days, when the fate of the State or the Union is to 
be decided at the polls; when, over all the land, the votes are falling thick as hail, 
and we seem to hear them rattle like the clangor of arms ; is it not enough to make 
the lover of his country turn pale, to reflect upon the motives under which they 
may be given, and the consequences to which they may lead 1 By the votes of a 
few wicked men, or even of one wicked man, honorable men may be hurled from 
office, and miscreants elevated to their places; useful offices abolished, and sine- 
cures created ; the public wealth, which had supported industry, squandered upon 
mercenaries ; enterprise crippled, the hammer falling from every hand, the wheel 
stopping in every mill, the sail dropping to the mast on every sea, — and thus capital 
which had been honestly and laboriously accumulated, turned into dross ; in fine, 
the whole policy of the government may be reversed, and the social condition of 
millions changed, to gratify one man's grudge, or prejudice, or revenge. In a 
word, if the votes, which fall so copiously into the ballot-box, on our days of election, 
emanate from wise counsels and a loyalty to truth, they will descend, like bene- 
dictions from Heaven, to bless the land and fill it with song and gladness, — such as 
have never been known upon earth since the days of Paradise ; but if, on the other 
hand, these votes come from ignorance and crime, the fire and brimstone that were 
rained on Sodom and Gomorrah would be more tolerable. 

So if, at the time when that almost anarchical state of things which immediately 
followed the Revolutionary War, subsided and took shape and character in the 
Republican form of our National and State constitutions ; — if, at that time, there 
was a large class of men more wealthy and better educated than the mass, — pos- 



n 

sessing more of the adventitious distinctions of society, and conversant with an 
ampler range of human history, — and hence drawing auguries unfavorable to 
themselves and to the community, from the copious infusion of the democratic 
principle into all our institutions ; — that class of men had one of the most solemn 
duties to perform ever imposed upon human beings. If they had a superior knowl- 
edge of the past, and a greater stake in the future, it was alike their duty and their 
interest, to stifle all considerations of person and caste, to reconcile themselves to 
their new condition, and to concentrate all their energies in providing some refuge 
from impending evils. With our change from a monarchical to a popular govern- 
ment, — from a government where all rule descended from " our Lord the King," 
to one where all rule ascended from " our Lords the People," the whole condition 
and relations of men were changed. It was like a change in the order of Nature. 
Were the poles of the earth to be now swung round, ninety degrees, — to a coinci- 
dence with the equator, — it would not work a greater change in the soil and climate 
of all the zones, than was wrought by that change of government, both in the 
relative and absolute conditions of men. Before this epoch, the few, by force of 
rank, wealth, dress, equipage, accomplishments, governed the many ; after it, the 
many were to govern the few. Before this, birth and family were words of potent 
signification; but the revolution worked the most thorough attainder of all such 
blood ; and it would have been better for a man to put on the poisoned tunic of 
Nessus, than to boast that a drop of aristocratical blood coursed through his veins. 
Before this, the deference paid to the opinions of different men, varied in the ratio 
of thousands to one ; but after this, the vote of the veriest ignoramus or scoundrel 
would balance that of Franklin or Washington. 

About the expediency, and especially about the extent of that change, a wide 
difference of opinion prevailed. But, the change being made, was it not the duty 
of its opponents to yield to the inevitable course of events, and to prepare for coming 
exigencies? And could not every really noble soul find an ample compensation 
for the loss of personal influence or family distinction, in the greater dignity and 
elevation of his fellow beings? From whom should instruction come, if not from 
the most educated? Where should generosity towards the poor begin, if not with 
those whom Providence had blessed with abundance ? Whence should magna- 
nimity proceed, if not from minds expanded by culture? If there were an order 
of men who lost something of patrician rank by this political change, instead of 
holding themselves aloof from the people, they should have walked among them 
as Plato and Socrates did among their contemporaries, and expounded to them 
the nature and the vastness of the work they had undertaken to do ; — nay, if need 
were, they should have drained the poisoned bowl to sanctify the truths which 
they taught. For want of that interest and sympathy in the condition of the poor 
and the ignorant which the new circumstances required, they and their descendants 
have been, and will be compelled to drink potions, more bitter than hemlock, as 
their daily beverage. Interest, honor, duty, alike required that no word of asper- 
sion or contumely should be cast upon the new order of things or its supporters. 
Why should they laugh at the helmsman, when the ship which contained their 
own treasures as well as his, was in the furrows of the sea? If, as was contempt- 
uously said by one of the most gifted men of that party, these republican institu- 
tions are '.* like white birch stakes whose nature it is to fail in two years ;" and 
that " a republic wears out its morals almost as soon as the sap of a white birch 
rots the wood," — they should forthwith have saturated them with such a preparation 
of virtue and knowledge as would kyanize* even the porous structure of birch 
itself, and keep the dry-rot forever from its spongiest fibres. With the change in 
the organic structure of our government, there should have been corresponding 
changes in all public measures, and institutions. For every dollar given by the 
wealthy, or by the State, to colleges, to cultivate the higher branches of knowledge, 
a hundred should have been given for primary education. For every acre of land 
bestowed upon an academy, a province should have been granted to Common 
Schools. Select schools for select children should have been discarded ; and 

*" Kyanizing" is a chemical process, by which wood is supposed to be rendered indestructible. 



12 

universal education joined hands with universal suffrage. It was no time for 
" Old Mortality" to be furbishing up the gravestones of the dead, when house, and 
household, and posterity were all in peril from the living. Instead of the old order 
of nobility, with its baubles and puerilities, a new order should have been created, 
— an order of Teachers, wise, benevolent, filled with Christian enthusiasm, and re- 
warded and honored by all ; — an order looking forward to a noble line of benefactors 
whom they might help to rear, rather than backwards to ancestors from whom they 
had basely degenerated. In these schools, the first great principle of a republican 
government, — that of native, inborn equality, should have been practically inculca- 
ted, by their being open to all, good enough for all, and attended by all. Here too, 
the second great principle of a republican government should have been taught, — 
that all men, though natively equal, become inherently unequal the moment that 
one grows wiser or better than his fellow. The doctrine of " higher" and " lower" 
classes in society should have been retained, but with a change in its application. 
Those who had done the most good to mankind should have been honored as the 
" highest;" while those who had done no good to the race, either by the labors of 
the hand or by the labors of the mind, — who had lived, without requital, upon the 
earnings of others, and left the world no better or made it worse, than they found 
it, should have been thrust down in the scale of social consideration, to " low" and 
" lower," through all the degrees of comparison. Whatever of leisure or of knowl- 
edge was possessed by the more wealthy or educated, should have been freely ex- 
pended to enlighten the laboring classes. Lectures, libraries, lyceums, mechanics' 
institutes, should every where have been fostered ; scientific tracts gratuitously 
distributed ; and a drowning child should not have been snatched from a watery 
grave with more promptness and alacrity than an ignorant or an abandoned one 
should have been sought out, and brought under elevating and reforming influen- 
ces. The noblest public edifices, the most splendid galleries of art, theatres, gar- 
dens, monuments, should all have been deemed a reproach to any people, while 
there was a child amongst them without ample and improved means of education. 
The nature and functions of our government, the laws of political economy, the 
duties as well as the rights of citizens, should have been made familiar as house- 
hold words. The right to vote should have been held up as the most sacred of 
human rights, as involving all civil and religious rights, and therefore to be con- 
strained, (coactum, as the Romans would have more vigorously expressed it,) by 
all civil and religious obligations. The great truth should every where have been 
inculcated, by example as well as by precept, that for the dependant to vote from 
malice, or envy, or wantonness, involves substantially the moral guilt of treason ; 
and for the superior to compel the dependant, through fear or bribery, to vote 
against his judgment, involves the baseness as well as the guilt of subornation of 
treason. Had this been done, our days of election would never have been, as they 
now so often are, days of turbulence, and bacchanailan riot, of insulting triumph 
or revengeful defeat ; but they would have been days of thoughtfulness and of 
solemnity, such as befit a day whose setting sun will witness the ruin or the rescue 
of so much of human welfare. 

Had this been done, our pioneer settlers would not have abandoned their homes, 
for the western wilderness, until they could have carried all the blessed influences, 
— the power and the spirit of education, with them. No prospect of wealth would 
have tempted them to leave a land of moral culture for a moral desert. Then our 
civilization, as it expanded, would have been laden with blessings. We might, 
indeed, have subjugated less territory by the arts of industry and enterprise ; but as 
a thousand-fold requital for this, we should have subjugated fewer aborigines by 
fraud and violence. Instead of the unenviable power which belongs to the sword, 
we should have enjoyed the godlike power which resides in beneficence. 

And until all this work of improvement is done, — until this indifference of the 
wealthy and the educated towards the masses shall cease, and legislative bounty 
shall atone for past penuriousness, there can be no security for any class or descrip- 
tion of men, nor for any interest, human or divine. With additional thousands of 
voters, every year crossing the line of manhood to decree the destiny of the nation, 



13 

without additional knowledge and morality, things must accelerate from worse to 
worse. Amid increasing darkness and degeneracy, every man's rights may be in- 
vaded through legislation, — through the annulment of charters or the abrogation 
of remedies ; — and through the corruption of jurors, or even of one juror on the 
panel of twelve, every man's right of redress may be denied for the grossest ag- 
gressions. As parties alternate, the rich may now be plundered of a life of gains ; 
and now, through vindictive legislation, the arms of the laboring man struck dead 
by his side. And if, amid these scenes, even Washington should arise, and from 
the battlements of the capitol, should utter a warning voice, the mad populace 
would hurl him from the Tarpeian. In fine, in our government, as at present ad- 
ministered, or as likely to be administered, the power, even after a choice of rul- 
ers, is so far retained by the people as almost to supersede the reality of represen- 
tation ; and, therefore, if the whole people be not equal to the business entrusted 
to them, — the mass, like any individual, will assuredly ruin what they do not un- 
derstand. 

I have said that schools should have been established for the education of the 
whole people. These schools should have been of a more perfect character than 
any which have ever yet existed. In them the principles of morality should have 
been copiously intermingled with the principles of science. Cases of conscience 
should have alternated with lessons in the rudiments. The multiplication table 
should not have been more familiar nor more frequently applied, than the rule, to 
do to others as we would that they should do unto us. The lives of great and 
good men should have been held up for admiration and example ; and especially 
the life and character of Jesus Christ, as the sublimest pattern of benevolence, of 
purity, of self-sacrifice, ever exhibited to mortals. In every course of studies, all 
the practical and preceptive parts of the Gospel should have been sacredly includ- 
ed; and all dogmatical theology and sectarianism sacredly excluded. In no school 
should the Bible have been opened to reveal the sword of the polemic, but to un- 
loose the dove of peace. 

I have thus endeavored to show, that with universal suffrage, there must be 
universal elevation of character, intellectual and moral, or there will be universal 
mismanagement and calamity. 

Let us now, in the first place, inquire whether there is at present, in this coun- 
try, a degree of intelligence sufficient for the wise administration of its affairs. If 
there is sufficient intelligence in the aggregate people, then there must be sufficient 
in the individual members ; and, if there is not sufficient in the individual members, 
then there is not sufficient in the aggregate. 

The last census of the Uniied States shows the round number of five hundred 
and fifty thousand persons, over the age of twenty years, unable to read and 
write. From no inconsiderable attention devoted to this and kindred topics, I am 
convinced that the above number, great as it is, is far below the truth. I will 
state one or two of the reasons, among many, which have led me to this conclusion. 

There is no part of our country where a man would not prefer to be accounted 
able to read and write, rather than to be written down according to the preference of 
Dogberry. To be supposed the possessor of power and accomplishments is a de- 
sire common to all men, whether savage, or civilized, or in the intermediate state. 
The deputy marshals or assistants who took the census travelled from house to 
house, making the shortest practicable stay at each. They received compensa- 
tion, by the head, not by the day,, for the work done. Considering the time to 
which they were limited, more was required of them than could be thoroughly and 
accurately performed. The most credible sources of information would be the 
heads of families ; but as these might not always be at home, they were allowed 
to receive statements from persons over sixteen years of age. It must often have 
happened that the import of the questions proposed by them was not fully under- 
stood. Their informants were subjected to no test, — their bare word being ac- 
credited. The very question would imply disparagement, and would often be re- 
garded as an insult, by those who saw no reason for putting it. A new source of 
error would exist in any want of fidelity in the agent ; and who can suppose, 



14 

among so many, that all were faithful ? It is well known too, that no inconsidera- 
ble number of persons gave false information when inquired of by the deputies, — 
either through a wanton or mischievous disposition, or through a fear that the cen- 
sus was only a preliminary step to some tax or other requisition, to be made upon 
them by the government. 

Let me fortify this reasoning with facts. In the annual message of Governor 
Campbell of Virginia, to the Legislature of that State, dated January 9th, 1839, — 
the year immediately preceding that in which the census was taken, — I find the 
following statement : — 

" The importance of an efficient system of education, embracing in its comprehensive and benevolent 
design, the whole people, cannot he too frequently recurred to. 

" The statements furnished by the clerks of five city and borough courts, and ninety-three of the 
county courts, in reply to the inquiries addressed to them, ascertain, that of those who applied for mar- 
riage licenses, a large number were unable to write their names. The years selected for this inquiry 
were those of 1817, 1827, and 1337. The statements show that the applicants for marriage licenses in 
1317, amounted to four thousand six hundred anil eighty-two ; of whom eleven hundred and twenty- 
seven were unable to write ; — five thousand and forty-eight in 1827, of whom the number unable to 
write was eleven hundred and sixty-six ;— and in 1837, the applicants were four thousand six hundred 
and fourteen ; and of these the number of one thousand and forty-seven were unable to write their 
names. From which it appears, there still exists a deplorable extent of ignorance, and that in truth, it 
is hardly less than it was twenty years ago, when the school fund was created. The statements, it 
will be remembered are partial, not embracing quite all the counties, and are moreover confined to one 
sex. The education of females, it is to be feared, is in a condition of much greater neglect. 

" There are now in the State two hundred thousand children between the ages of five and fifteen. 
Forty thousand of them are reported to be poor children ; and of them only one half to be attending 
schools. It may be safely assumed that of those possessing property, adequate to the expenses of a 
plain education, a large number are growing up in ignorance, for want of schools within convenient 
distances. Of those at school, many derive little or no instruction, owing to the incapacity of the teach- 
ers, as well as to their culpable negligence and inattention. Thus the number likely to remain unedu- 
cated and lo grow up, without just perceptions of their duties, religious, social, and political, is really of 
appalling magnitude, and such as to appeal with affecting earnestness to a parental Legislature " 

Here let the audience mark particulars. Written application was to be made for 
a marriage license. The rudimental or elementary education which a person ob- 
tains, usually precedes marriage. After this climacteric, people rarely go to school 
to learn reading and writing. The information, here given, was obtained from 
five city and borough, as well as from ninety-three county courts, (the whole num- 
ber of counties in the State being one hundred and twenty-three;) — not, therefore, 
in the dark interior only, but in the blaze of city illumination. The fact was 
communicated by the governor of a proud State to the Legislature of the same. 
Each case was subjected to an infallible test, for no man who could make any 
scrawl in the similitude of his name, would prefer to make his mark and leave it 
on record. The requisition was made upon the officers of the courts, and the evi- 
dence was of a documentary or judicial character, — the highest known to the law. 
And what was the result ? Almost one quarter part of the men applying for mar- 
riage licenses were unable to write their names ! It would be preposterous to sup- 
pose that their intended wives had gazed, from any nearer point than their hus- 
bands, at the splendors of science. Indeed, Governor Campbell clearly intimates 
an opinion that the women were far more ignorant than the men. 

I ought to add, that an inquiry made in another part of the same State, by one 
of its public officers, showed that one-third of all those who had applied for a mar- 
riage license had made their marks. 

Now Virginia has a free white population over 20 years of age, of 329,959. 
One fourth part of this number is 82,489, which, according to the evidence present- 
ed by Governor Campbell, is the lowest possible limit, at which the minimum of 
adults unable to read and write, can be stated. But the census number is 58,787 
only, making a difference of 23,702, or more than 40 per cent. North Carolina, 
with a free white population over 20 years of age of only 209,635, has the appal- 
ling number, even according to the census, of 56,609 unable to read and write ; 
or a great deal more than one quarter part of the whole free population, over 20 
years of age, below zero, in the educational scale. If to this number we should 
add 40 per cent, as facts require us to do in the case of Virginia, we should find 
almost two-fifths of the whole adult population of that State in the same Cimme- 
rian night. 



15 

I had proposed to pursue this computation in regard to Kentucky, Tennessee, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Sec, but the task is useless and sickening. It 
must suffice to stale, in general terms, that the number according to the census, of 
persons over the age of 20, unable to read and write, is, in Virginia, 58,787, in 
North Carolina, 56,609, Kentucky, 40,010, Tennessee, 58,531, South Carolina, 
20,615, (with a free white population over 20 years of age, of only 111,663, and 
with 327,038 slaves,) Georgia, 30,717, and Alabama, 22,592; and that, by the 
Constitution of the United States, these ignorant multitudes have the right of 
voting for Representatives in Congress, not only for themselves, but for their slaves, 
— five slaves being counted as equal to three whites. Now, if to the 550,000 free 
white population, over the age of 20 years, unable to read and write, as shown by 
the census, we should add only thirty per cent, for its undoubted under-estimates, it 
would increase the total to more than 700,000. 

I might derive another and a convincing argument, from the statistics of educa- 
tion given by the census, in regard to our own State, to prove their inaccuracy. 
The same general motives, which would lead to an under-statement in regard to 
the number of persons unable to read and write, would lead to an over-statement 
in regard to the number of those attending school. In Massachusetts, the whole 
number of scholars of all ages, in all our Public Schools, is annually returned by 
the school committees, — men highly competent to do their duty, familiar with the 
subject, and possessing the most ample and exact means of information. By those 
returns, it appears that the whole number of scholars who were in all our Public 
Schools, any part of the time during our school year 1840-41, (the year in which 
the census was taken,) was but 155,041, and the average attendance was, in win- 
ter 116,398, and in summer, 96,802 ; — while the number given in the census, is 
158,351. 

But without seeking any closer approximation to so unwelcome a truth, let us 
suppose, that we have but 700,000 free white persons in the United States, over the 
age of twenty years, unable to read and write ; and further, that only one quarter 
part of these are voters, — that is, we will deduct one half for females, and allow 
one half of the male moiety to be persons, either between twenty and twenty-one, 
or unnaturalized, (which, considering the States where the great mass of this ig- 
norance belongs, is a most liberal allowance, because the number of ignorant im- 
migrants is much less at the South than at the North) and we should then have 
175,000 voters, unable to read and write. 

Now at the last presidential election, when every voter not absolutely in his 
winding sheet was carried to the polls, — when the harvest-field was so thoroughly 
swept that neither stubble nor tares were left for the gleaner, — at that election, the 
majority for the successful candidate was 146,081, — about 30,000 less than the 
estimated number of legal voters in the United States, unable to read and write. 
At this election it is also to be remembered, a larger majority of the electoral votes 
was given to the successful candidate than was ever given to any other President of 
the United States, with the single exception of Mr. Monroe in 1820, against whom 
there was but one vote. Gen. Harrison's popular majority also, was undoubtedly 
the largest by which any President of the United States has ever been elected, 
with the exception above mentioned, of Mr. Monroe, and perhaps that of General 
Washington, at his second election. And yet this majority, large as it was, was 
about 30,000 less than the estimated number of our legal voters, unable to read 
and write. 

No, Fellow-Citizens, we have not for years past, and we shall not have, at 
least for many years to come, an election of a President, or a Congress, or a Gov- 
ernor of a State, — chosen under written constitutions, and to legislate and act un- 
der written constitutions, whose choice will not be dependent upon, and determina- 
ble by, legal voters, unable to read and write, — voters who do not know, and can- 
not know, whether they vote for King Log, or King Stork. The illustrious and 
noble band who framed the Constitution of the Union, — Washington, Adams, 
Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, — who adjusted all the principles which it contains, by 
the line and the plummet, and weighed the words which describe them in scales 



16 

so nice as to tremble beneath the dust of the balance, — expended the energies of 
their mighty minds to perfect an instrument, which, before half a century should 
pass away, was doomed to be administered, controlled, expounded, by men unable 
to read and write. The power of Congress over all the great social and economi- 
cal interests of this vast country ; the orbits in which the States are to move 
around the central body in the system ; the functions of the Executive, who holds 
in his hands the army and the navy, manages all diplomatic relations with foreign 
powers, and can involve the country, at any time, in the horrors of war ; and that 
grand poising power, the Supreme Judiciary, appointed to be the presiding intel- 
ligence over the system, to harmonize its motions and to hold its attracting and di- 
vergent tendencies in equilibrium ; — all this splendid structure, the vastest and the 
nicest ever devised by mortals, — is under the control of men who are incapable of 
reading one word of the language which describes its frame-work, and defines its 
objects and its guards, — incapable of reading one word of contemporaneous expo- 
sition, of antecedent history, or of subsequent developments, and therefore ready 
to make it include anything, or exclude anything, as their blind passions may dic- 
tate. Phaeton was less a fool when he mounted the chariot to drive the horses of 
the sun, than ourselves, if we expect to reach the zenith of prosperity and happi- 
ness under such guidance ! 

I have spoken of those only who might as well have lived before Cadmus in- 
vented letters, as in the middle of this nineteenth century. But it is to be remem- 
bered there is no unoccupied space, — no broad line of demarcation between the 
totally ignorant and the competently learned. Between meridian and midnight, a 
dim and long twilight intervenes. 

If the seven hundred thousand, who, in one particular, surpass the most learned 
of ancient or modern times, — because to them all written languages are alike, — if 
these are the most numerous class, — probably the next most numerous consists of 
those who know next to nothing, — and in reaching the summit of the highest in- 
telligence, we should ascend by very easy gradations. Very many people learn to 
write their names for business purposes, whose attainments, at that point, become 
stationary; and it is one thing to be just able to read a verse in the Bible, and 
quite another to understand the forty thousand words in common use, among intel- 
ligent men ; — there being more than a geometrical increase in the ideas which 
these words may be made to convey. Nay, if a few of the words, used by an in- 
telligent man, are lost to the hearer, through his ignorance of their meanihg, the 
whole drift and object of the speaking or writing are lost. The custom so preva- 
lent at the West and South, of stump-speaking, as it is significantly but uncouthly 
called, had its origin in the voters' incapacity to read. How otherwise can a can- 
didate for office communicate with ignorant voters ? Should he publish his views 
and send them abroad, he must send an interpreter with them ; but at a barbecue, 
— amidst the sympathy of numbers, the excitement of visible objects, the feast, the 
flow, the roar, — the most abtruse points of the Constitution, the profoundest ques- 
tions of national policy can all be expounded, and men and measures decided 
upon, to universal satisfaction ! 

A clear corollary is deducible from this demonstration. If the majority of a 
self-governing people are sober-minded, enlightened, studious of right, capable of 
comparing and balancing opposite interpretations of a fundamental law, or oppo- 
site views of a particular system of policy ; then all appeals addressed to them in 
messages, speeches, pamphlets, and from the thousand-tongued newspaper press, 
will be calm, dispassionate, adapted at once to elucidate the subject under consid- 
eration, and to instruct and elevate the mind of the arbiters. But, on the other 
hand, if the people are ignorant, fickle, averse to, or incapable of, patient inquiry, 
prone to hasty decisions from plausible appearances, or reckless from prejudice or 
passion, then the demagogues who address, will adapt themselves to the dupes who 
hear, just as certainly, as the hunter adapts his lure to the animal he would en- 
snare; and flattery, imposture, falsehood, the vindication and eulogy of fellow-par- 
tisans, however wicked, and the defamation of opponents, however virtuous, will 
be the instruments by which a warfare, destructive in the end alike to victors and 



17 

vanquished, will be waged. Let the spirit and tone of our congressional and leg- 
islative speech-makers, and the language of the political press, throughout the 
country, decide the question, which of the above described classes they consider 
themselves as addressing. 

Some have thought that, in a Republic, the good and wise must necessarily 
maintain an ascendency over the vicious and ignorant. But whence any such 
moral necessity? The distinctive characteristic of a Republic is, the greater free- 
dom and power of its members. A Republic is a political contrivance by which 
the popular voice is collected and uttered, as one articulate and authoritative sound. 
If then, the people are unrighteous, that utterance will be unrighteous. If the 
people, or a majority of them withdraw their eyes from wisdom and equity, — those 
everlasting lights in the firmament of truth ; if they abandon themselves to party 
strife, where the triumph of a faction, rather than the prevalence of the right, is 
made the object of contest, — it becomes as certain as are the laws of omnipotence, 
that such a community will express and obey the baser will. 

Suppose a people to be honest, but unenlightened either by study or experience ; 
and suppose a series of questions to be submitted to them for decision, more grave 
and important than were ever before evolved in the history of the race. Suppose 
further, that many of the leading men among them, and the principal organs 
which hold communication with ihem, instead of striving to enlighten and instruct, 
only inflame and exasperate one portion of them against another portion, — and in 
this state of mind they proceed to the arbitrament. Would it not be better, like 
the old Roman soothsayers, to determine the question by the flight of birds, or to 
learn the oracles of fate by inspecting the entrails of an animal ? 

When a pecuniary question, however trifling, is to be submitted to a bench of 
judges, composed of the most learned men in the land, the parties whose interest is 
at stake, employ eminent counsel, that the whole merits of the case may be de- 
veloped, and conduce to a just decision. And the court will not suffer its attention 
to be withdrawn, or its judgment to be disturbed, by vilification of an opponent, or 
flattery of the tribunal, or the introduction of any other irrelevant matter, but re- 
bukes them as a personal indignity. Now the people have questions to decide in- 
finitely more important than are ever submitted to any court, — they may have the 
question of the court's existence to decide on, — and should not they, therefore, de- 
mand of all their advisers, whether elected or self-constituted, a corresponding 
truthfulness and gravity? 

All philosophers are agreed in regard to all the great truths of astronomy, chem- 
istry, engineering, mechanics, navigation ; — if any new point arises, they address 
themselves most soberly and sedulously to its solution ; if new instruments are 
wanted, they prepare them : if they are deficient in any collateral branch of in- 
formation, they acquire it. And yet philosophy has no questions more difficult or 
important than those which are decided with us, by a major vote. Why then 
should we wonder that on all the great questions which, as yet, have arisen under 
our government, — the increase or reduction of the army and navy ; peace or war ; 
tariff or anti-tariff; internal improvements or no internal improvements; currency, 
bank or no bank, sub-treasury or no sub-treasury ; — why should we wonder, that on 
all these and other vital questions, we should already have precedents and author- 
ities on both sides, and every thing as yet unsettled ; — nay even a wider diversity 
and a fiercer conflict of opinion, at the present time, than at the foundation of the 
government? 

And while the present state of things exists, is it not obvious, that we can nei- 
ther develop the principles of a true policy, nor enjoy the advantages of consisten- 
cy even in an erroneous course ? A foreigner would naturally inquire how it is, 
that, with such an extended country and with such predominating interests, our 
parties are so equally balanced, — and why it is, that power so often shifts hands 
amongst us, and rivals and competitors are now on this side and now on that, like 
partners in a country-dance. The answer is obvious. If any one party predom- 
inates, and triumphs even to the silencing of opposition, — not through any saga- 
city or sanity of its own, but owing to a deep under current of events which bears 

3 



18 

it prosperously along, notwithstanding any follies or enormities which may be com- 
mitted on the surface; it is easy to see that, in a country presenting such diversi- 
fied interests as ours, and with knowledge so inadequate to a mastery of their re- 
lations, the defeated and dispersed party can rally under some new name, and 
avowing some new and plausible purpose, again contend for victory. And thus, 
in an ignorant community, the decomposition and recomposition of parties may 
follow each other forever. Or, suppose that each of two great parties contains a 
million of tried adherents, — of men who may be relied on, who will not, on the 
morning of battle, strike their flag and march over in a body, to the enemy's 
ranks; — but suppose that, in addition to this loyal million on each side, there are 
a hundred thousand mere mercenaries, — political Swiss, ready to fight on either 
side, and whose only inquiry is, which side offers greater pay and greater plunder ; 
— is it not plain that every question will be decided by the hirelings ? Foreseeing on 
what the fate of the day is to depend, will not each party, — at least its irresponsi- 
ble members, if not its leaders, — be tempted to offer bounty and spoils, — to bid 
and over-bid for their services, until the venal Hessians are glutted. Is this 
prophecy, or is it history ? 

We look with a kind of contempt as well as abhorrence upon the self-styled 
republics of South America, which seem to be founded politically, as well as ter- 
ritorially, upon earthquakes. Were it not that so much of human happiness is in- 
volved in their revolutions, ridicule would overpower indignation at the spectacle 
they present. It is difficult to state the number of their overturns, and of late 
years, it has seemed hardly worth while to keep the tally, but probably the chan- 
ges of party and of policy in our general government, have not been much less 
numerous than theirs. In some of our States certainly, the changes of party have 
been so frequent, that the Moon would be their most appropriate coat of arms.* 

In one important particular, indeed, we have the advantage of our name-sakes 
in the Southern hemisphere ; for our revolutions of party, as yet, have been blood- 
less. How long they may continue so, even in New England, depends upon the 
measures we take to give predominance to principle over passion, in the education 
of the young. 

To these indisputable facts respecting the general ignorance of this country, 
it cannot be answered, that, stationed at different points, all over its surface, with 
narrow intervening distances, there are a few men, who have been bred in collegiate 
halls, educated in all the lore of civil polity, and trained to the labors of profes- 
sional life, who will be eyes to the blind, and understandings to the foolish, and 
will lead the ignorant in the paths of wisdom. In the first place, suppose that 
irreconcilable differences should arise amongst these men ; — can an ignorant and 
stupid people decide between them, with any certainty of not deciding in favor of 
the erroneous? And again ; the history of the world shows an ever-present de- 
sire in mankind to acquire power and privilege, and to retain them, when acquir- 
ed. Knowledge is power ; and the race has suffered as much from the usurpers 
of knowledge, as from Alexanders or Napoleons. If learning could be monopo- 
lized by a few individuals amongst us, another priesthood, Egyptian or Druidical, 
would speedily arise, bowing the souls of men beneath the burden of their terri- 
ble superstitions ; or, if learning were more widely spread, but still confined to a 
privileged order, the multitude, unable to comprehend the source of the advantages 
it conferred, and stimulated by envy and fear, would speedily extinguish whatever 
there might be of light, — just as the owl and the bat and the mole, if they were 

* In the twenty-two elections for Governor of the Slate of New York, which have taken place since 
the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789, the average majority has been only a little more than 
twelve thousand ; and, omitting the election of 1822, when the opposition was only nominal, the average 
majority has been less than seven thousand; while, according to the census, the number of whites in 
that State, over 20 years of age, unable to read and write, is more than 44,000. In Pennsylvania, the 
majority for Governor hns varied from 3,000 to 25,000. It has 33,940 whites, over 20 years of age, una- 
ble to read and write. In Ohio, the majority has varied from 2.000 (in 1828, and 1830) to 14,000, (last 
year.) Its number of adult whites unable to read and write, is 35,394. 

In the presidential election of 1836, Mr. Van Buren's majority over Harrison and White was 25,000, — 
South Carolina choosing her electors by the Legislature. At the very next election, (1840,) the major- 
ity, on the opposite side, was 146,000. 



19 

promoted to the government of the solar system, would extinguish the sun, because 
its beams arrested their hunt for insects and vermin. No ! The whole people 
must be instructed in the knowledge of their duties, they must be elevated to a 
contemplation and comprehension of those great truths on which alone a govern- 
ment like ours can be successfully conducted ; and any hope of arresting degen- 
eracy, or suppressing the insurgent passions of the multitude by the influence Oh 
here and there an individual, though he were wise as Solon or Solomon, would 
prove as fallacious as an attempt to stop the influx of malaria, by sprinkling a 
little chloride of lime along the creeks and shallows of the shore, if the whole 
ocean, in all its depths, were corrupted. 

Bear with me, Fellow-Citizens, while I say, I rejoice that this emergency has 
burst upon us. I rejoice that power has passed irrevocably into the hands of the 
people, although I know it has brought imminent peril upon all public and private 
interests, and placed what is common and what is sacred alike in jeopardy. Cen- 
tury after century, mankind had groaned beneath unutterable oppressions. To 
pamper a few with luxuries, races had been subjected to bondage. To satiate the 
ambition of a tyrant, nations had been dashed against each other in battle, and 
millions crushed by the shock. The upward-tending, light-seeking capacities of 
the soul had been turned downwards into darkness and debasement. All the realms 
of futurity, which the far-seeing eye of the mind could penetrate, had been peo- 
pled with the spectres of superstition. The spirits of the infernal world had been 
subsidized, to bind all religious freedom, whether of thought or of speech, in the 
bondage of fear. Heaven had been sold, for money, like an earthly domicile, by 
those who, least of all, had any title to its mansions. In this exigency, it was the 
expedient of Providence, to transfer dominion from the few to the many, — from 
those who had abused it, to those who had suffered. The wealthy, the high-born, 
the privileged, had had it in their power to bless the people ; but they had cursed 
them. Now, they and all their fortunes are in the hands of the people. The pov- 
erty which they have entailed is to command their opulence. The ignorance 
they have suffered to abound, is to adjudicate upon their rights. The appetites 
they have neglected, or which they have stimulated for their own indulgence, are 
to invade the sanctuary of their homes. In fine, that interest and concern for the 
welfare of inferiors, which should have sprung from motives of philanthropy, must 
now be extorted from motives of self-preservation. As famine teaches mankind 
to be industrious and provident, so do these great developments teach the more 
favored classes of society that they never can be safe while they neglect the wel- 
fare of any portion of their social inferiors. In a broad survey of the grand 
economy of Providence, the lesson of frugality and thrift, which is taught by the 
dearth of a single year, is no plainer than this grander lesson of universal benev- 
olence, which the lapse of centuries has been evolving, and is now inculcating 
upon the world. 

Yes, Fellow-Citizens, it is the sublimest truth which the history of the race has 
yet brought to light, that God has so woven the fortunes of all men into one in- 
separable bond of unity and fellowship, that it can be well with no class, or oli- 
garchy, or denomination of men, who, hi their own self-seeking, forget the wel- 
fare of their fellow-beings. Nature has so bound us together by the ties of broth- 
erhood, by the endearments of sympathy and benevolence, that the doing of good 
to others opens deep and perennial well-springs of joy in the human soul ; but if 
we will select the coarse gratifications of selfishness, — if we w'll forget our own 
kindred blood in whosesoever veins it may flow, then the Eternal Laws denounce, 
and will execute upon us, tribulation and anguish, and a fearful looking for of an 
earthly, as well as of a heavenly judgment. 

In the first place, there is the property of the affluent, which lies outspread, dif- 
fused, scattered over land and sea, — open alike to the stealthiness of the thief, 
the violence of the robber, and the torch of the incendiary. If any think they 
hold their estates by a surer tenure, — by charters, franchises, or other muniments 
of property ; let them know that all these, while the ballot-box which controls leg- 
islation, and the jury-box and the witnesses' stan 1, which control the tribunals of 



20 

jnstice, are open ; — all these are but as iron mail to protect them against lightning. 
Where is their security against breaches of trust, and fraudulent bankruptcies,— 
against stop-laws and suspension-acts, or the bolder measures of legislative repudi- 
ation ? If their ultimate hope is in the protection of the laws, what shall save 
them, when fraud and perjury turn every legal remedy into a new instrument of 
aggression ? And behind all these, there is an omnipotent corps de reserve of 
physical force, which mocks at the slowness of legislation and judicature, — whose 
decrees are irreversible deeds, — whose terrific decisions flash forth in fire, or burst 
out in demolition. 

But houses, lands, granaries, flocks, factories, warehouses, ships, banks, are 
only exterior possessions, — the out-works of individual ownership. When these 
are carried, the assault will be made upon personal security, character and life ; 
and, lastly, upon all the endearments and sanctities that cluster around the domes- 
tic altar, — and when these are lost, humanity has nothing more to lose. 

Look at England : and is she not, at the present moment, teaching a lesson 
too instructive to be lost upon us? There, a landed aristocracy, by extortious 
rents and class-legislation, have turned every twelfth subject into a pauper. 
They have improved soils; but they have forgotten the cultivator himself, — 
as though the clod of the valley were worth more than the soul of the tiller. The 
terms offered by manufacturing capitalists, with a few most worthy exceptions, 
have been, absolute starvation, or work with the lowest life-sustaining pittance. 
Manufacturers have been most anxious about tariff laws, which merely regulate the 
balance of trade ; but heedless of those moral laws, which determine the balance of 
all power in the last resort. They have been alive to all improvements in ma- 
chinery, but dead to the character of the operatives who were to work it. Surely 
there is no such danger of spontaneous combustion in a heap of oiled cotton or 
wool, as there is in a mass of human ignorance and prejudice ; nor can the former 
be so easily set on fire by a torch, as the latter by a demagogue. For years past 
the upper house of parliament have perseveringly and successfully resisted all 
measures for National Education, which they could not pervert from the bestow- 
ment of equal benefits upon all, to the support of their own monopolies. And, as 
a legitimate consequence of all these systematic, wholesale infractions of the 
great law which teaches us to do unto others as we would that they should do 
unto us, there are now, to-day, three millions of Chartists thundering at their palace 
gates, and the motto upon their banner is, " Bread or Blood." 

What Paley so justly said of a parent, that " to send an uneducated child into 
the world is little better than to turn out a mad dog or a wild beast into the streets," 
is just as true when applied to parliament and hierarchy, as when applied to an 
individual.* 

*For a century past, a vast portion of -the wit of all English novel and dramatic literature has turned 
upon the ignorance and coarseness of the common people. The millions have first been shut out from 
the means of knowledge and good breeding, and then their cockneyisms, their provincial, outlandish 
pronunciation and brogue, their personal awkwardness and half-formed ideas, have been ridiculed and 
laughed at, by those who could afford to buy gilt covered books, and go to Drury Lane and Covent 
Garden. This double injustice of withholding knowledge and good manners, and then making sport of 
ignorance and clownishness, has been so long pursued that some of its natural consequences are fast 
developing. The ignorant and debased, knowing nothing of the gratifications of intelligence and refine- 
ment, have invented a few modes of fun and merrymaking, peculiar to themselves;— such as the burning 
of cornstacks and hay-ricks, and the sprinkling of vitriol on magnificent dresses. Being disqualified for 
the use, and debarred from the dignity of the ballot-box, they betake themselves to the tinder-box. The 
light of blazing granaries serves them instead of brilliant ideas. In the malice of their misery, they 
love company too well not to reduce the diamond -studded robes of lords and prelates, to the value of 
their own beggarly rags. And is there not a close resemblance between these pastimes of the " high" 
and the " low ?" An educated nobleman regales himself at the theatre, or in his palace, with a farce or 
novel, where the uncouth language and awkward manners of the poor and the neglected are made 
ridiculous ; and, as he alights from, or re-enters his emblazoned carriage, a dexterous villain pinks a 
thousand eyelet holes through his dress of ermine, or cloth of gold, by the skilfully sprinkled contents 
of a vitriol bottle. The one enjoys a farce in three acts ; the other, in one act. The wit in both instances 
must consist in the incongruity; and, as to tke humanity of the sports, the latter seems every whit as 
legitimate a source of amusement as the former ; or, to speak phrcnologically, the pleasure, in both cases, 
is felt in the same part of the head. To a benevolent and Christian mind, how unutterably shocking- 
are the extremes of such a state of society ; and what terrible retributions follow in the train of selfish 
legislation ! 



21 

But if such is the present difference between the great interests which, in this 
country, we have in charge, and the intelligence that superintends those interests ; 
what is our prospect in regard to the future ? I speak not of the remote future, 
but of that which is now opening upon our view, and which the middle-aged man 
may live to see. Is time sweeping us forward to a better, or to a worse condition ? 
The answer to this depends upon the extent and the efficiency of the means now 
employed to educate the rising generation. Let us quicken our resolutions, or 
calm our fears, by looking, for one moment, at the facts of the case. 

The free population of the United States in 1840, was 14,581,553. It is found 
that about one fourth part of our population are between the ages of four and six- 
teen years. In Massachusetts it is so almost without a fraction.* 1 Although there 
may be slight variations from this ratio in other States, yet undoubtedly the number 
four is an integer, by far nearer than any other that could be taken, which, 
when compared with unity or one, would show the ratio between the whole pop- 
ulation of the United States, and the number of children within them, between the 
ages of four and sixteen years. 

Now one fourth part of the whole population, is 3,645,368, while the whole num- 
ber of children of all ages, in the Primary and Common Schools of the Union, is only 
1,845,244, which would leave 1,800,144, or almost half the children of an age to 
attend school, and far more than half the whole number, between, four and sixteen 
years of age, without any of the advantages which those schools might afford. t 

Nor would the result be materially altered, even should we add all the students 
of those institutions, called academies and grammar schools, as contradistinguished 
from Primary and Common Schools ; for they amount, in all, only to 164,159. 
The difference between four and sixteen, being twelve, if we divide the number of 
those who neither attend any academy, grammar, common, or primary school, by 
twelve, it will give a quotient of 136,332 persons who belong to this uneducated 
class, and who are annually passing the line of majority, and coming upon the stage 
of life, to be the fathers and the mothers of the next generation, the depositaries of 
all we hold dear, — in fine, to be the electors, or the elected, for all our magistracy. 
This class alone will annually furnish a number of voters, far greater than the 
average popular majority by which our presidents have been chosen. And even 
this statement, fearfully large as it is, does not include those foreigners who are 
coming, thousands every week, to mingle with our people, and very soon to take 
part in the choice of all our officers. 

It was the observation of one of the most philosophical foreigners who has ever 
visited this country, (George Combe, Esq.,) that probably a majority of all the 
voters in the United States, were under thirty-five or thirty-six years of age. I 
think an examination of the last census would verify this remaik. It would re- 
quire then but fourteen years, — or three and a half presidential terms, — a period 
almost identical with that which has elapsed, since the election of Gen. Jackson, — 
to bring forward a numerical majority of voters who have never possessed either 
the intellectual or the moral advantages of a school ; — and to whom the interior of 
a schoolroom would be as novel an object as the interior of an Egyptian pyramid, 
and the books and apparatus of the former as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics of 
the latter. Indeed, why are not the political destinies of the country already in 
such hands 1 This class, from their profound ignorance, will necessarily be inca- 
pable of discerning principles, or of appreciating arguments ; — accessible through 
the passions alone ; creating demagogues for leaders, and then destroying them, 
just as naturally as a barbarian makes an idol of a stock, or a serpent, and then 
hews it down, or kills it, when it does not answer his ridiculous or selfish prayers. 
Nor will this class of men necessarily attach themselves to any one party ; but 
they will be, like the shifting ballast of a vessel, always on the wrong side. 

* Whole population, 737,699;— Number between 4 and 16, (omitting three small towns,) 164,392. 
Now 184,392x4=737,568. So far as there is any difference, the proportion of children to adults would 
be greatest in the new States. 

t There is of course, some domestic education. But this exists, but seldom, excepting in favor of 
those children who also go to school, and are therefore included in the above computation. 



22 

I have spoken only of that half of our rising population, — our future rulers, — who, 
from infancy to manhood, are rarely in any school of any kind. But, in no house 
for education is there any charm or magic, of such transforming power, as to turn 
an ignorant child into a capable citizen. What is the house ; what the course of 
study and the appliances; who the teacher, and how long the attendance ; become 
here significant questions. In regard to the moiety who, at some period of their 
minority, may be found in the schoolroom, look at the edifices where they assem- 
ble, which must have been first called Temples of Science by some bitter ironist ; 
consider their meager outfit of books and apparatus ; reflect upon the strong ten- 
dency, in all uneducated quarters, to keep a show-school, instead of a useful one; 
and think, for a moment, of the character of a portion, at least, of the teachers, 
whose only evidence of competency is, that nothing has been made in vain, and 
that they have failed in every thing before undertaken. It is by force of these 
adverse circumstances, that even in Massachusetts, although the compensation is 
far higher than in any other State in the Union, yet so niggardly are many teachers 
paid, and so little sympathy and social consideration do they receive, that young 
men, not unfrequently, desert the occupation of school-keeping and resort to our 
cities to let themselves out as servants in kitchens, or as grooms in stables; — well 
knowing that a kitchen, as destitute of apparatus as our common schoolrooms, is 
a thing unheard of, even in an alms-house ; and that, if they keep their horses 
sleek and nimble, they will be better rewarded than if they " trained up children 
in the way they should go." Female teachers, too, abandon the schoolroom for the 
factory, for they have learned that a spinning-frame, or a power-loom, has no 
mother to abuse and defame them for making it work as it ought to work. And in 
those parts of the country where there are no Public Schools, but where a few of 
the wealthy procure their own teachers, how often are the private tutors and gov- 
ernesses treated as mere upper servants in the family, or even made the scape-goat 
for a child's offences ; — as, in former times, it is said to have been the practice in 
England, when the king's son was sent to school, to send another boy with him as 
his companion, whose vicarious duty it was to receive all the flagellations due to 
the misdemeanors of his royal school-fellow. 

In looking at the last census of the United States, one might infer that, at least 
something adequate to the exigencies of the times, had been done, in the higher 
departments of education. The census shows a list of one hundred and seventy- 
three universities or colleges, with more than sixteen thousand students. I rejoice 
in the existence of any institutions for the increase of knowledge among the people ; 
but the honor of education is rather tarnished than brightened, by giving a Presi- 
dent and Faculty, instead of a prudential committee man, to a district school, and 
then calling it a college. The census gives to Massachusetts but four colleges, 
with 769 students. What, then, are we to think of the twelve colleges, set down 
to Maryland, (with less than three sevenths of our free white population, and with 
almost twelve thousand over the age of 20, unable to read and write,) with 813 
students ; — of the thirteen colleges, set down to Virginia, with 1,097 students ; of 
the ten, in Kentucky, with 1,419 students ; and of the eighteen in Ohio, with 1,717 
students. Some of these colleges or universities, at the West and South, I know 
are well conducted, and embrace a competent range of studies; but whoever has 
visited many of the institutions bearing these high-sounding names, inquired into 
their course of studies, marked the ages of the students, and seen the juvenile 
alumni, well knows, that the amount of instruction there given bears no greater 
proportion to what a liberal college course of studies should be, than the narrow 
circuit of a mill-horse, to the vast circumference of the Hippodrome. 

And what are we doing, as a people, to supply these great deficiencies'? What 
intellectual lights are we kindling to repel the night of ignorance, whose coming 
on will bring, not only darkness, but chaos? 

There is not a single State in this whole Union, which is doing anything at all 
proportionate to the exigency of the case. The most that can be said is, that 
there are three States out of the twenty-six, which have adopted some commendable 
measures for the promotion of this great work. These are Massachusetts, New 



23 

York and Michigan, — the first by sustaining her Board of Education, by her Normal 
Schools, and her District School Libraries ; the second by her District School 
Libraries, her fund, and her county superintendents of schools ; and the third, by 
her magnificent fund, and her State superintendency of education. Five years 
ago, Ohio entered upon the work, but after about two years, the measure was sub- 
stantially abandoned. Four years ago, a new system was established in Connecti- 
cut, which was most efficiently and beneficially administered, under the auspices 
of one of the ablest and best of men, (Henry Barnard, 2d, Esq. ;) but it is with 
unspeakable regret I am compelled to add, that within the last month, all her 
measures for improvement have been swept from the statute-book. New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and Kentucky may be mentioned as exhibiting signs of life on this 
subject, although it is a life which far more nearly resembles the imitative and 
feeble movements of infancy, than the independent and conscious energy of 
manhood. 

In but few of the other States, can even a well digested system for the organi- 
zation of schools be found in the statute-book; and in most of them, the meager 
provisions upon the subject seem to have been inserted, only as a sort of ornamen- 
tal legislation, and are disregarded or obsolete. And, what is most painful and 
humiliating to reflect upon, in all the principal slave States, — Virginia, North Car- 
olina, South Carolina, Georgia, and so forth, — the highest homage which is paid 
to the beneficent power of education, is the terrible homage of making it a severely 
punishable offence, to educate a slave ! 

Now, even within the narrow horizon of the politician, what is the result of this 
neglect of childhood, and the consequent ignorance of men ? When an election 
is coming on, whether State or National, then the rival parlies begin to play their 
game for the ignorant, and to purchase the saleable. Mass-meetings are held. 
Hired speakers itinerate through the country. A thousand tireless presses are 
plied, day and night. Newspapers and pamphlets are scattered thick as snow- 
flakes in a wintry storm. Reading-rooms and committee-rooms are opened, and 
men abandon business and family to fill them. The census is taken anew, and 
every man is labelled or ear-marked. As the contest approaches, fraud, intimida- 
tion, bribes, are rife. Immense sums are spent to carry the lame, to hunt up the 
skulking, to force the indifferent to the polls. Taxes are contributed, to qualify 
voters, and men are transported, at party expense, from one State to another. 
Couriers are despatched from county to county, or from State to State, to revive 
the desponding with false news of success. And after all this, even if a party 
chances to succeed in its choice of men, what security has it, for the fulfilment of 
any of its plans ? Death may intervene. A " unit" cabinet may explode, and be 
scattered into many fragments. A party cemented together by no principle of 
moral cohesion, and founded upon no well-settled convictions of the intellect, may 
be broken in pieces, like the image of Nebuchadnezzar. Ten thousand retainers 
of the camp, who followed it only through hope of plundering the dead, will scent 
other spoils in another camp, when that hope is extinguished ; and thus all the 
toil that was endured, and the expenditures and sacrifices that were made, will be 
lost. 

For the last ten years, such have been the disastrous fluctuations of our Na- 
tional and State policy, on the single subject of the currency, that all the prodi- 
gality of nature, pouring her hundreds of millions of products, annually, into our 
hands, has not been able to save thousands and thousands of our people from pov- 
erty ; and in many cases, economy, industry and virtue could not rescue their pos- 
sessor from want. And why? 1 answer, as one reason, because this question has 
been decided, again and again, by voters who could not read and write, — by voters 
whom the simplest proposition in political economy, or in national finance, is as to 
unintelligible as a book of Hebrew or Greek. Should such men vote right, at 
any onetime, it would be for a wrong reason ; and the favorable chances being ex- 
hausted, they may be relied upon to vote wrong ever afterwards. Hence, under 
one administration, we have had a bank, under another, a sub-treasury, and the 
third may be commended to the benefit of its own bankrupt law. 



24 

During all this time, the course of our government, on this and other great 
questions of policy, has been vacillating, — enacting and repealing, advancing and 
receding, baffling all the plans of the wisest ; — instead of imitating in some good 
decree, as it should do, the steadiness and force of the Divine administration. 

And who are they who have suffered most under these changes which so nearly 
resemble anarchy ? Whose property has been dissipated ? Whose enterprises 
have been baffled ? Are they not mostly those who have been, not merely neg- 
lectful, but disdainful, of the Common Schools ? who have given whatever wealth 
they had to give, to public libraries, to colleges, and the higher seminaries of 
learning? who have separated their children from the mass, and gathered them 
into class, and clan, and sectarian schools of their own? who have opposed legis- 
lative grants and municipal taxation; and who, for their whole lives, have never 
countenanced, patronized, or even visited the Common School, from which their 
own rulers were so soon to emerge? What a remarkable fact it is in the history 
of this Commonwealth, that amongst all the splendid donations, — amounting in 
the whole to many millions of dollars, — which have been made to colleges and 
academies, and to theological institutions for the purpose of upholding the doc- 
trines of some particular sect ; — only one man, embracing the whole of the rising 
generation in his philanthropic plan, and acting with a high and enlightened dis- 
regard of all local, partisan, and sectarian views, has given any considerable sum 
to promote the prosperity of Common Schools ! (Hon. Edmund Dwight.) 

And this series of disasters, under which we are suffering, must lengthen to an 
interminable train ; those anxieties which the wealthy and the educated now feel 
for their purse, they must soon feel for their characters, their persons, and their 
families ; the whole country must be involved in wider, and deeper calamities, 
until a more noble and Christian policy is pursued. All the newspapers that 
steam power can print, during the most protracted political canvass, will be no 
equivalent for the single book in which a child learns to read. One mind trained 
to thought and investigation, upon the forms of the schoolroom, will arrive at 
sounder truths than can ever be impressed upon it by a hired political missionary. 
If we would have better times, the available school teacher must be sought for, as 
anxiously as the available candidate for office ; and efforts as energetic must be 
made to bring children into the schools, as are now made to bring voters to the 
polls. If we would have better times, we need not honor or reward the writers of 
our past history, — Sparks, Bancroft, Irving, — less ; but we must honor and reward 
the makers of our future history, — the school teachers, — more. 

But I have labored to supererogation, to show both an existing and a prospec- 
tive deficiency in knowledge, for managing the vast and precious interests of this 
great nation. I have shown, — if not an incurable, yet unless cured, — a fatal mal- 
ady in the head ; I must now exhibit a not less fatal malady in the heart. I trem- 
ble at the catalogue of national crimes which we are exhibiting before heaven and 
earth ! The party rancor and vilification which rages through our newspaper 
press, — in utter forgetfulness or contempt of the great spiritual law, that when men 
pass from judgment to passion, they will soon pass from passion to violence ! 
The fraud, falsehood, bribery, perjury, perpetrated at our elections ; and the spirit 
of wantonness or malice, — of pride or envy, in which the sacred privilege of 
voting is exercised ! The practice of double voting, like parricide in Rome, un- 
heard of in the early days of the Republic, is becoming more and more frequent. 
Although, in some of the States, a property qualification, and in some even a land- 
ed qualification is necessary ; yet the number of votes given at the last presiden- 
tial election, equalled, almost without a fraction, one-sixth part of the whole free 
population in the Union. In one of the States the number of votes exceeded, by 
a large fraction, one-fifth of the whole population, — men, women, and children. 
Will it not be a new form of a Republic, — unknown alike to ancient or modern 
writers ; when the question shall be, — not how many voters there are, but how many 
ballots can be printed and put surreptitiously into the ballot-box ? Then, there is 
the fraudulent sequestration of votes, by the returning officers, because the majori- 
ty is adverse to their own favorite candidates, — which has now been done, on a 



25 

large scale, in three of the principal States in the Union ! The scenes of vio- 
lence enacted, not only without, but within the Capitol of the nation ; and the 
halls, which should be consecrated to order, and solemnity, and a devout consulta 
tion upon the unspeakable magnitude and value of the interests of this great peo- 
ple, desecrated by outrage, and Bilingsgate, and drunken brawls ! Challenges 
given, and duels fought by members of Congress, in violation, or evasion, of their 
own lately enacted law against them ; and within the space of a kw days, a proud 
and prominent member, from a proud and prominent State, — the countryman of 
Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison, put under bonds to keep the peace, like 
a wild, fresh-landed Carib. In two of our legislative assemblies, one member has 
been murdered by another member, in open day, and during the hours of session ; 
— in one of the cases, the deed being perpetrated by the presiding officer of the as- 
sembly, who descended from his chair, and pierced the heart of his victim with a 
bowie knife, — and still goes unpunished though not unhonored. What outbreaks 
of violence all over the country ; — the lynching of five men, at. one time, at Vicks- 
burg ; — the valley of the Mississippi, from St. Louis to New Orleans, lighted almost 
as with watch fires, by the burning of human beings ; — the riots and demolitions, at 
New York, at Philadelphia, at Baltimore, at Alton, at Cincinnati; — yes, and the 
spectacle of our own more serene part of the heavens, crimsoned at midnight, by 
a conflagration of the dwelling-place of women and female children, — a deed in- 
cited and brutally executed, through prejudice, and hostility towards a sect which 
takes the liberty to protest against Protestants, as Protestants protested against 
them ! 

And, in addition to this barbarian force and lawlessness, are net the business re- 
lations of the community contaminated, more and more, with speculation and 
knavery? In mercantile honor and honesty, in the intercourse between buyer and 
seller, is there not a luxation of allt he joints of the body commercial and social? The 
number of fraudulent bankruptcies, — fraudulent in the incurring of the debts, if not 
in the surrender of the assets ; — the rapacity of speculation ; the breaches of private 
trust: the embezzlement of corporate funds; the abscondings with government 
property ; the malversations of government fiduciaries, whetherof a United States 
Bank, or of a Girard College ; the repudiation of Stale debts ; — and that other 
class of offences which combines the criminality both of fraud and force, — such 
as the shooting of a sheriff, who attempted to execute civil process, — or the 
burning of a bank with all its contents, by a company of debtors, in Mississippi, 
because their notes had been lodged in it for collection! 

I trust the fact will not fail to be observed, and the motive to be appreciated, 
that, from this terrific array of enormities I have omitted one entire class of 
events; — a class which may be thought by some more ominous of ill than any I 
have enumerated. I refer to such facts as the late commotions in Rhode Island 
ensuing upon the long-delayed extension of suffrage ; — the legislative declaration 
already made in two of the States, of an intention to disregard the apportionment 
law, recently passed by the general government; — the admission to a seat, in the 
House of Representatives of the last Congress, of the claimants from JNew Jersey, 
against the credentials of the State authorities ; — the refusal of one branch of the 
Tennessee Legislature to elect Senators to fill vacancies in the Senate of the 
United States ; — the admission into the Union of Territories which had exercised, 
by assumption, the right of forming a constitution for themselves, without any au- 
thority from the general government, or any law prescribing the mode in which it 
should be done ; — the armed " nullification" of South Carolina, &c. &c. [ omit 
all this class of cases from the catalogue, because they are, at present, implicated 
with strong party feelings, on one side or the other ; and it is my intention, on 
this day, to touch no party chord ; — to bring forward nothing, either of fact or of 
principle, which the candid men of all parties shall not acknowledge to be a com- 
pulsive reason for immediate measures of reform. 

Let us look at another aspect of this case. The number of convicts at pres- 
ent in confinement, in the penitentiaries, and State prisons of the Union, is very 
nearly four thousand seven hundred and fifty ; and the average duration of their 
4 



26 

imprisonment is about four years. The number under sentenced/or crime, in com- 
mon jails, and houses of correction, is not less than the preceding, and the average 
length of their imprisonment is estimated at six months. Suppose that these 
culprits live, on an average, but eight years after their enlargement; and we have 
the appalling number of eighty-five thousand Jive hundred convicted criminals, — 
proved offenders against the laws of God and man, — almost universally adults, — 
at large, mingling in our society, and a very large portion of them competent to 
vo t e ; — there being but three States in all this Union, where, by the constitution of 
the State, a conviction for felony, or any infamous offence, works a forfeiture of 
the elective franchise. Yes ! voters, good and true, — for the wrong side, and to 
send you and me to perdition ! And I do not believe there is one State in the 
Union, whose elections for Governor and other high officers, have not, sometimes, 
been so nearly a drawn game, that its quota of this felon host, its own battalion 
of sin, would not have been able to decide them, by what a politician would call, 
a very respectable majority ! 

I have somewhere seen the number of atheists, of Abner Kneeland's men, in 
the United States, stated fearfully high ; but upon what authority, or after what 
extent and accuracy of investigation, I am not able to say. These are all men, — 
if not all voters ; for, thank Heaven, the female heart is untenantable by atheism. 
But a fact, far more important than the number of theoretical atheists, is the num- 
ber of practical atheists, — of those who live without God in the world, who have 
neither faith nor practice, respecting the existence, the immutability, and the in- 
evitable execution of the Divine Laws. I say the number of practical atheists is 
the question of greater importance ; for who can live in this world and mingle 
with its people, and not be more und more deeply impressed, day by day, with the 
divine wisdom of the criterion, " By their fruits ye shall know them?" Actions 
are fruits, while pharisaical professions are only gilded signs or placards, hung 
upon thistles or thornbushes, saying, " Ho, all ye ; we bear figs and grapes !" 

In this review, I pass by those combinations of ignorance and false teaching, 
which lead to Mormonism, and Millerism, and Perfectionism. 1 pass by that reck- 
less and flagitious spirit, which, on the Canadian border, lately came so near 
to involving us in a conflict with the most powerful nation on earth. I pass by 
our treatment of the aborigines. I pass by such an event as the Florida war, which 
has already cost this nation more than thirty millions of dollars; and which, as is 
now notorious, was instigated by desperadoes, because it promised to prove for 
them, as it has proved, a more lucrative business than other modes of swindling or 
depredation. 

With irrepressible, but unspeakable joy, I pass by the hundreds of thousands of 
inebriates, who, so lately, lay weltering upon the sea of Intemperance; yet who, 
periodically, were rafted up, by political partisans, — as men raft up float-wood, — 
to drop their foul votes into the ballot-box, and elect the rulers of a self-called 
free and Christian people ; — these do I gladly pass by, for the waters of that deluge 
are subsiding; and already thousands and ten thousands, yea, more than ten times 
ten thousand, have found an Ararat on the Terra Firma of Abstinence. 

Fellow-Citizens, from this glimpse, — this mere bird's-eye view, — of our intel- 
lectual and moral condition, I do not hesitate to affirm, that our republican edifice, 
at this time, — in present fact and truth, — is not sustained by those columns of 
solid and ever-enduring adamant, — intelligence and virtue. Its various parts are 
only just clinging together by that remarkable cohesion, — that mutual bearing and 
support, which unsound portions of a structure may impart to each other ; and 
which, as every mechanic well knows, will, for a time, hold the rotten materials 
of an edifice together, although not one of its timbers could support its own weight ; 
— and unless, therefore, a new substructure can be placed beneath every buttress 
and angle of this boasted Temple of Liberty, it will soon totter and fall, and bury 
all in-dwellers in its ruins. 

And what, I again ask, are we doing, to impart soundness and permanency to 
that which we profess so much to value and admire? We all bear witness that 
there is but one salvation for the State, — the knowledge of duty and the will to do 
it, among the people. But what measures are we taking, to cause that knowledge 



27 

to spring up, like a new intellectual creation, in every mind ; and to cause that 
will to be quickened into life, in every breast ? We all agree, — the universal ex- 
perience and history of mankind being our authority, — that, in nineteen cases ooft 
of every twenty, if the human mind ever is to be expanded by knowledge and im- 
bued with virtuous principles, it must be done during the susceptible years of 
childhood and youth. But when we come to the sine qua non, — to the work, — to 
the point where volition must issue forth into action, or it is valueless; — when we 
come to the taxing, to the building, to the books, to the apparatus, to the whole 
system of preparatory and contemporaneous measures for carrying on, and per- 
fecting the work of education ; — where wishes and sympathy and verbal encour- 
agement are nothing without the effective co-operation of those muscles which 
perform labor and transfer money ; — when we come to this point, then excuses 
teem, and the well-wishers retire from the stage, like actors at the close of a drama. 
I gladly acknowledge that there are honorable exceptions, in all ranks and classes 
of men ; and in no State in the Union, are there so many of these exceptions, as 
in Massachusetts ; and yet even hers, is it not most extensively true, that when 
we appeal to the different classes and occupations of men, we meet with indiffer- 
ence, if not with repulse? We solicit the farmer to visit the school, but he is too 
much engaged with the care of his stock, to look after his children. We apply 
to the tradesman, but his account of profit and loss must be adjusted before he can 
attend to the source of all profit and loss, in the mind. We call upon the phy- 
sician, but he has too many patients in the arms of death, to allow hirn one hour 
for arresting the spread of a contagion by which, if neglected, hundreds of others 
must perish. We apply to the lawyer and the judge, but they are redressing the 
wrongs and avenging the violated laws of society, — they are so engaged in uncoil- 
ing the folds of a parent serpent which has wound itself round the State, that they 
cannot stop to crush a hundred of its young, ere they issue from the nest, to wind 
their folds alike around the State, and the law, and its ministers. We apply to the 
clergyman ; he bids us God speed, — but commends us for assistance, to the first 
man we meet; for he and his flock are beleaguered by seven evil spirits, in the 
form of seven heresies, — each fatal to the souls of men. We sally forth from his 
doors, and the first man we meet is his clerical brother; but he, too, has seven 
fatal heresies to combat, and he solemnly assures us that the most dangerous leader 
of them all, is the man we have just left. We apply to the wealthy and the be- 
nevolent, who are carrying on vast religious enterprises abroad ; but they have just 
shipped their cargoes of gold to Africa, to Asia, and to the uttermost isles of the 
sea, and can spare nothing; — never asking themselves the question, who, in the 
next generation, will support the enterprises they have begun, and retain the foot- 
hold they may acquire, if they suffer heathenism, and the idolatry of worshipping 
base passions, to spring up in their native land, and around their own doors. We 
go to those great antagonist, theological institutions, which have selected high so- 
cial eminences, all over the land, and entrenched themselves against each other, as 
warring generals fortify their camps upon the summit of confronting hills ; — we 
implore them to send out one wise and mighty man to guide this great people 
through a wilderness more difficult to traverse than that which stretched between 
Egypt and Canaan ; but each hostile sect is engaged in propagating a creed which 
it knows to be true, against the fatal delusions of those various and opposite creeds, 
which each of the other sects also knows to be true! Oh! when will men learn, 
that ever since the Saviour bowed his head upon the cross and said " It is finished," 
there has been truth enough in the world, to make all men wise and holy and 
happy. All that is wanted, — all that ever has been wanted, is, — minds that will 
appreciate truth. The barbarian cannot appreciate it, whether born in New Zea- 
land, or in New England. The benighted and brutified child, whose thoughts 
are born of prejudice, whose actions of sensualism; whose moral sensibilities 
have been daily seared, from his birth, with the hot iron of vicious customs and 
maxims, cannot discern truth, cannot know it, will not embrace it, whether his 
father is called a savage or a Christian. If we say that the conceptions and de- 
sires of such minds are a transcript of Divine truth, what do we affirm the origi- 



23 

nal to be ! No ! Two different elements are essential to the existence of truth 
in the soul of man;— first, the essence, or prototype of truth, as it exists in the 
Divine Intelligence ; and secondly, a human soul, sufficiently enlightened by knowl- 
edge to conceive it, sufficiently exercised in judgment to understand it, and suf- 
ficiently free from evil to love it. The latter are every whit as essential as the 
former. The human mind must be so enlarged that truth can enter it, and so tree 
from selfishness, from pride, and intolerance, that truth may be its constant and 
welcome resident. To give truth a passport to the souls of men,— to ensure it home 
and supremacy in the human heart, there must be some previous awakening and 
culture of the intellectual and moral nature. In this respect, it is with spiritual, 
as with scientific truth. The great astronomical truths which pertain to the solar 
system, have existed ever since the creation ;— for generations past, they have been 
known to the learned ;— and all the planets, as they move, are heralds and torch- 
bearers, sent round by the hand of God, revolution after revolution, and age after 
age, to make perpetual proclamation through all their circuits, and to light up the 
heavens, from side to side, with ocular and refulgent demonstration of their exis- 
tence ; and yet, until their elements are all laboriously taught, until our minds are 
opened, and made capacious for their reception, these glorious truths are a blank, 
and for our vision and joy, might as well never have been. And so of all truth ; 
— there must be a mind enlarged, ennobled, purified, to embrace truth, in all its 
beauty, sublimity and holiness, as well as beautiful, sublime and holy truths to be 
embraced. Until this is so, truth will be a light shining in darkness, and the dark- 
ness comprehending it not. But when this shall come to pass, then the awakened 
soul will exclaim with Jacob, » surely the Lord was in this place, and I knew it 
not." Yet,— alike in all lands and for centuries past,— ninety-nine hundredths of 
all human efforts and expenditures have been devoted to force, upon the succes- 
sive generations of the young, some special system, which happened in the particu- 
lar age, to be in the ascendant; and which, in its turn, had been prejudicated by 
fallible men, to be infallibly true ;— while scarcely any thing has been done to 
kindle the love of truth in the human breast, and to train the intellect to strength 
and impartiality in all investigations after it. • , 

Fellow-Citizens, there is one strongly developed tendency in our political affairs 
which I cannot pass by, on an occasion like this, without an admonitory word. 
Though less obvious, yet it is of more evil portent, than any in the dark catalogue 
I have exhibited. It leads by swift steps to proximate ruin. I refer to the prac- 
tice of the different political parties, into which we are unhappily divided, of seizing 
upon some specious aspect of every event, giving it an exaggerated and factitious 
importance, and perverting it to factious profit. In common and expressive phrase, 
this, is called making political capital out of a thing ; and the art of making this 
capital seems now to be incorporated into the regular tactics of party leaders. 
But it is forged capital, and in the end, it must bring forger and accomplices to judg- 
ment and condemnation, as well as all their dupes to political and moral insolven- 
cy. In law, such practices, or rather mal-practices, are called chicanery ; and they 
justly subject to infamy, the practitioner who is corrupted with them. But law 
deals with private interests,— politics with the vaster interests of the whole com- 
munity. And why should not the trick and knavery which strike a man's name 
from the roll of the court, strike it also from the red-book of the nation ! Look at 
it, Fellow-Citizens ;— a great question arises in the Legislative Halls of the State 
or Nation, or springs up in any part of our country; and immediately the party 
leaders and the party press reflect before the eyes of all the people,— not segments 
or fragments, even,— but distorted and discolored images of all the truths, facts 
and principles, pertaining to that question, — so distorted and discolored that no im- 
partiality or patience can reproduce any likeness to the original. So extensive has 
this practice become, that an honest inquirer into the merits of men or measures, 
in reading accounts of the same individuals or transactions, in the rival newspapers 
of the day, would suppose them to relate to wholly different men and different 
measures, were it not for the occasional identity of the proper names which are used. 
Must it not follow that the vast majority of the people will get mutilated and false 



29 

views; and come, habitually, to decide the real question by looking at the coun- 
terfeited, until the mind itself is as perverted as the lights which shine on it. 
Immense responsibilities attach here to all who influence public opinion, whether 
they sit in the presidential, or gubernatorial, or editorial chair. The habit of as- 
cribing, to trivial and fleeting considerations, the prominence and inviolability of 
eternal laws ; the habit of discarding at every political crisis, the great principles 
which lie under the whole length of existence, and are the only possible basis of 
our well-being, in order to gain some temporary end ; the habit, at our oft-recur- 
ring elections, of risking all future consequences, to secure present success, is high 
treason against the sovereignty of truth, and must be the harbinger of a speedy 
destruction. We can conceive of no power in the universe, that could uphold its 
throne, under so fatal a policy. 

I do not advert to this prominent feature of our times, — worthy of far more ex- 
tended consideration, — in order that one party may look into the conduct of its 
adversaries, to find cause of accusation ; but that each may look upon its own 
course, and in view of it, demand and effect a speedy amendment. 

Fellow-Citizens, amidst the distractions which now rend the country, let me ask 
you, as sober and reflecting men, what remedy do you propose for the present ? 
what security for the future ? Evils are not avoided by closing our eyes against 
them ; — and, in which direction do you look for hope, without confronting disap- 
pointment or despair? Will the great political and financial problems which now 
agitate the Union, ever be rightly solved and permanently adjusted, while they are 
submitted, year after year, to voters who cannot even read and write? Can any 
additional intelligence and integrity be expected in our rulers, without additional 
intelligence and integrity in the constituency that elects them? Complain of 
President or Congress as much as we will, they are the very men whom we, the 
people, have chosen. If the country is an active volcano of ignorance and guilt, 
why should not Congress be a crater ior the outgushing of its lava ? Will Provi- 
dence interfere to rescue us by a miracle, while we are voluntarily pursuing a course, 
which would make a speedier interference, and a more stupendous miracle neces- 
sary for our subsequent rescue? How much of time, of talent, and of wealth, we 
are annually expending, — in Legislatures, in political conventions, through news- 
papers, — to gain adherents to one system of policy, or its opposite, to an old party 
or to a new one; — but how little to rear a people with minds capable of under- 
standing systems of policy, when developed, and of discerning between the right 
and the wrong, in the parties which beset and would inveigle them. What honors 
and emoluments are showered upon successful politicians; what penury and ob- 
scurity are the portion of those who are moulding the character of a rising gener- 
ation of sovereigns ! And here let not the truth be forgotten, that the weightiest 
obligation to foster and perfect the work of education, lies upon those States which 
enjoy the most, and not upon those which suffer under the least; for to whomso- 
ever much is given, of them shall much be required. 

Let us suppose that we were now overtaken by some great crisis in our national 
affairs, — such as we have already seen, or may soon see, — let us suppose that, in 
the issue of some presidential contest, for instance, not only the public interests of 
the nation, but the private interests of thousands of individuals, should be adroitly 
implicated ; and that preparations should be made, and a zeal excited, correspond- 
ing to the magnitude of the occasion. War impends. Commerce, manufactures, 
agriculture, are at stake, or in conflict. The profits of capital, and the wages of 
labor, have been made to antagonize. North and South are confronted. Rich and 
poor, high and low, radical and conservative, bigot and iatitudinarian, are mar- 
shalled for the onset. The expectants of office, — suffering under a four, perhaps 
an eight years' famine, are rioting on anticipated spoils. The spume of other 
countries and the refuse of our own are coalescing, and some Catiline is springing 
to the head of every ruffian band. Excitement foams through all the veins of the 
body politic; — in some it is fever ; in others delirium ; and, under these auspices, 
or omens, the eventful day arrives. 

It surely requires but little effort of the imagination to picture forth the leaders 



30 

of all the party-colored bands into which our country is divided, as at the head of 
their respective companies, and gathering them to a mightier assembly than ever 
met in Grecian Areopagus or Roman Comitia. Among the vast and molley-soul- 
ed hosts, which such a day would summon together, I will direct your attention to 
but two grand divisions ; — divisions, however, of this republican army, which would 
be first in the field, and most contentious for the victory. I mean the legionaries 
of Crime and those of Ignorance. 

Behold, on this side, crowding to the polls, and even candidates for the high- 
est offices in the gift of the people, are those whose hands are red with a 
brother's blood, slain in private quarrel ! Close pressing upon these, urges on- 
ward a haughty band glittering in wealth, — but, for every flash that gleams from 
jewel and diamond, a father, a mother, and helpless children, have been stolen, 
and sold into ransomless bondage. Invading their ranks, struggles forward a 
troop of assassins, rioters, lynchers, incendiaries, who have hitherto escaped the 
retributions of law, and would now annihilate the law whose judgments they fear ; 
— behind these, pours on, tumultuous, the chaotic rout of atheism ; — and yonder 
dashes forward a sea of remorseless life, — thousands and ten thousands, — all felons, 
convicts, condemned by the laws of God and man. In all the dread catalogue of 
mortal sins, there is not one, but, in that host, there are hearts which have willed, 
and hands which have perpetrated it. The gallows has spared its victim, the 
prison has released its tenants, — from dark cells where malice had brooded, where 
incendiarism and lust had engendered their machinations, where revenge and rob- 
bery had held their nightly rehearsals, the leprous multitude is disgorged, and comes 
up to the ballot-box to fore-doom the destinies of this nation. In gazing at this 
multitudinous throng, who emerge from their hiding-places on the days of our 
elections, — all flagrant with crime and infamy, — would not every man exclaim, " I 
did not know, I could not have thought, that all the foul kennels and stews of 
earth ; nay, nor all the gorged avenues of hell, could regurgitate upon the world, 
these legions ol iniquity!" 

But look, again, on the other side, at that deep and dense array of Fgnorance, 
whose limits the eye cannot discover. Its van leans against us here, its rear is 
beyond the distant hills. They too, in this hour of their country's peril, have 
come up to turn the folly of which they are unconscious, into measures which 
they cannot understand, by votes which they cannot read. Nay more, and worse! 
for, from the ranks of crime, emissaries and bandit-leaders are sallying forth 
towards the ranks of ignorance, and hieing to and fro amongst them, — shouting the 
gibberish war-cries of faction, and flaunting banners with lying symbols, such as 
cheat the eye of a mindless brain, — and thus the hosts of crime are to lead on the 
hosts of ignorance, in their assault upon Liberty and Law ! 

What, now, shall be done to save the citadel of freedom, where are treasured all 
the hopes of posterity? Or, if we can survive the peril of such a day, what shall 
be done, to prevent the next generation from sending forth still more numerous 
hordes, — afflicted with deeper blindness and incited by darker depravity? 

Are there any here, who would counsel us to save the people from themselves, 
by wresting from their hands this formidable right of ballot? Better for the man 
who would propose this remedy to an infuriate multitude, that he should stand in 
the lightning's path as it descends from heaven to earth. And, answer me this 
question; you ! who would reconquer for the few, the power which has been won 
by the many ; you ! who would disfranchise the common mass of mankind, and 
recondemn them to become Helots, and bond-men, and feudal serfs; — tell me, were 
thev again in the power of your castes, would you not again neglect them, again 
oppress them, again make them the slaves to your voluptuousness, and the panders 
or the victims of your vices? Tell me, you royalists and hierarchs, or advocates 
of royalty and hierarchy ! were the poor and the ignorant again in your power, to 
be tasked and tithed at your pleasure, would you not turn another Ireland into 
paupers, and colonize another Botany Bay with criminals? Would you not bruti- 
fy the men of other provinces into the "Dogs of Vendee," and debase the noble 
and refined nature of woman, in other cities, into the " Poissaydes of Paris ?'"' 



31 

O ! better, far better, that the atheist and the blasphemer, and he who since the 
last setting sun, has dyed his hands in parricide, or his soul in sacrilege, should 
challenge equal political power with the wisest and the best; — better, that these 
blind Sampsons, in the wantonness of their gigantic strength, should tear down 
the pillars of the Republic, than that the great lesson which Heaven, for six 
thousand years, has been teaching to the world, should be lost upon it ; — the lesson 
that the intellectual and moral nature of man is the one thing precious in the 
sight of God; and therefore, until this nature is cultivated, and enlightened, and 
purified, neither opulence nor power, nor learning nor genius, nor domestic sanc- 
tity, nor the holiness of God's altars, can ever be safe. Until the immortal and 
godlike capacities of every being that comes into the world are deemed more 
worthy, are watched more tenderly, than any other thing, no dynasty of men, or 
form of government, can stand, or shall stand, upon the face of the earth ; and the 
force or the fraud which would seek to uphold them, shall be but " as fetters of flax 
to bind the flame." 

In all that company of felons and caitiffs, who prow! over the land, is there one 
man, who did not bring with him into life, the divine germ of conscience, a sensi- 
bility to right, and capacities which might have been nurtured and trained into the 
fear of God, and the love of man ? In all this company of ignorance, which, in 
its insane surgery, dissects eye and brain and heart, and maims every limb of the 
body politic, to find the disease, which honestly, though blindly, it wishes to cure ; 
— in all this company, is there one, who did not bring with him into life, noble fac- 
ulties of thought, — capabilities of judgment, and prudence, and skill, that might 
have been cultivated into a knowledge, an appreciation, and a wise and loving 
guardianship, of all human interests and human rights ? The wickedness and 
blindness of the subject are the judgments of heaven for the neglect of the sover- 
eign ; for, to this end and to no other, was superiority given to a few, and the souls 
of all men pre-adapted to pay spontaneous homage to strength and talent and ex- 
alted station, that through the benignant and attractive influence of their posses- 
sors, the whole race might be won to wisdom and virtue. 

Let those, then, whose wealth is lost or jeoparded by fraud or misgovernment ; 
let those who quake with apprehension for the fate of all they hold dear; let those 
who behold and lament the desecration of all that is holy ; let rulers whose coun- 
sels are perplexed, whose plans are baffled, whose laws defied or evaded ; — let them 
all know, that whatever ills they feel or fear, are but the just retributions of a right- 
eous heaven for neglected childhood. 

Remember, then, the child whose voice first lisps, to-day, before that voice shall 
whisper sedition in secret, or thunder treason at the head of an armed band. Re- 
member the child whose hand, to-day, first lifts its tiny bauble, before that hand 
shall scatter fire-brands, arrows and death. Remember those sportive groups of 
youth in whose halcyon bosoms there sleeps an ocean, as yet scarcely ruffled by 
the passions, which soon shall heave it as with the tempest's strength. Remember, 
that whatever station in life you may fill, these mortals, — these immortals, are your 
care. Devote, expend, consecrate yourselves to the holy work of their improve- 
ment. Pour out light and truth, as God pours sunshine and rain. No longer 
seek knowledge as the luxury of a kw, but dispense it amongst all as the bread of 
life. Learn only how the ignorant may learn ; how the innocent may be preserved ; 
the vicious reclaimed. Call down the astronomer from the skies ; call up the geol- 
ogist from his subterranean explorations ; summon, if need be, the mightiest in- 
tellects from the Council Chamber of the nation ; enter cloistered halls, where the 
scholiast muses over superfluous annotations ; dissolve conclave and synod, where 
subtle polemics are vainly discussing their barren dogmas ; — collect whatever of 
talent, or erudition, or eloquence, or authority, the broad land can supply, and go 
forth, and teach this people. For, in the name of the living God, it must be 
proclaimed, that licentiousness shall be the liberty ; and violence and chicanery 
shall be the law ; and superstition and craft shall be the religion ; and the self-de- 
structive indulgence of all sensual and unhallowed passions, shall be the only hap- 
piness of that people who neglect the education of their children. 



WM. B. FOWLE AND N. CAPEN 

Are Publishers of the Common School Journal, edited by the Hon. Horace Mann, 
Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, published semi-monthly, at one dol- 
lar a year. 

THEY ALSO PUBLISH : 

THE COMMON SCHOOL SPELLER, in which about 14,000 words of the English lan- 
guage are carefully arranged according to their sound, form, or other characteristics, so that 
the difficulties of English orthography are greatly diminished, and the memory of the pupil 
is greatly aided by classification and association. By ¥m. B. Fowle. 

It is of this Spelling Book that the Secretary of the Board of Education, in a lecture on 
Spelling Books, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, says — "Mr. 
Fowle's work applies the principle [of Association and Classification] more extensively 
than any other I have ever seen. — Now it would seem to need no argument to prove that 
a child will master twenty pages of words arranged in this way more easily than he 
will a single page of words classed according to the number of syllables or the place of the 
accent, irrespective of their formation. In such lessons as these, scholars will very rarely 
spell wrong. They can go through this Spelling Book twenty times, while they would go 
through a common Spelling Book once, and each time will rivet the association, and 
make of habit an ally of unconquerable force." 

THE COMMON SCHOOL GRAMMAR, being a Practical Introduction to English 
Grammar, with Illustrative Engravings ; designed for Preparatory Schools : by Wm. B. 
Fowle. This little book is calculated to help beginners over the threshhold, and the direc 
tions to teachers will be found of great value. The object of the work is to apply the princi- 
ples of Grammar directly to the formation of sentences, and the proper use of language. 

The Second Part is also published, and the Third nearly prepared. 

THE BIBLE READER ; a New Selection of Reading Lessons from the Holy Scrip- 
tures, for the use of Schools and Families, by Wm. B. Fowle. 

This selection was made in the hope that by its aid the Scriptures might be restored to 
our Common and Private Schools ; and that this selection is peculiarly fitted for this im- 
portant purpose, the following recommendations will abundantly prove : — 

From Rev. Jonathan Homer, D. D., of Newton. — "I think that this compendium may 
be used in the family or closet to great practical advantage, and I know several clergy- 
men besides myself who read it in their daily family devotions, and prize it highly. I 
have known not a few persons of judgment who have examined and approve it as a 
school-book of undoubted merit." 

From Rev. Wm. Jenks, D. D., of Boston. — " Mr. Fowle, in his Bible Reader, appears to 
have selected with good taste and arranged with much care, a series of extracts calcula- 
ted to exhibit many of the beauties of the Holy Scriptures in an attractive form, so that 
the young student may imbibe and cultivate a love of the Bible, and prepare to read it 
intelligently and usefully." 

From Rev. J. S. C. Abbott, author of Mother at Home, <.Vc. — " I have looked over the 
book with considerable attention and much interest. I was so much pleased with the 
plan and its execution, that I read it for some time in my family. It appears to me to 
be peculiarly well adapted for a reading book in schools, and were I a teacher I should 
be very desirous of using it as such." 

From Rev. Baron Stow, Pastor of the Second Baptist Church, Boste~, member of the 
Boston School Committee. — " I have examined your book, and am prepared to vote for 
its introduction into the schools." 

"From Rev. N. L. Frotiiingham, D. D., Boston. — "The Bible Reader meets, in my 
opinion, a great want, and meets it well. Its selections are made with excellent judg- 
ment, and the marking emphatic words by Italic characters is executed with a nice dis- 
cernment which very few can be supposed to possess. I think it every way suitable to 
be used in our schools." 

THE CHILDS ARITHMETIC, or the Elements of Calculation, in the spirit of Pesta- 
lozzi's method, for the use of children between the ages of three and seven years. Price, 
75 cents a dozen. 

The object of the work is to teach beginners to count and calculate quickly, correctly 
and understandingly, the exercises being adapted to the every-day wants of children. 

THE PRIMARY READER, consisting of Original and Selected Lessons, intended to 
interest as well as improve the younger class of learners. Price, $1,50 a dozen. 

This popular book is distinguished for the liveliness of its style, and for the great 
interest it excites in the young reader. It is composed of pieces well calculated to ena- 
ble the teacher to draw out the moral and intellectual powers of the child by questions 
and explanations, and the familiar dialogues, found only in this book, are especially cal 
culated to make natural and expressive readers. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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